| Birgit Metzger
Born: April 7, 1931
From:
Hochstatten, Germany
Kristallnacht survivor
Birgit grew up experiencing much anti-Semitism. As Jews the children were not allowed to attend the local school. Her father was a cattle broker, and Birgit lived at home with her parents and grandparents. Her older sister attended a boarding school.
Birgit vividly remembers November 1938, during Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass.” She was seven years old. The SS came to her house with axes and hammers, smashing windows and doors. Her family had locked themselves in a sewing room, but the SS broke down the door. Birgit remembers running into the street, surrounded by the family’s neighbors and friends, and screaming for help, although no one responded. The Nazis seized her father and grandfather and sent them both off to a concentration camp.
Birgit recalled, "That was one of the most awful moments of my life. I remember screaming. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought all those people were our friends.”
Her parents were able to send Birgit and her sister to Sweden to escape the Nazi persecution, and she came to the United States in 1940 through the help of a relative.
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