Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938
A true life story of a Foxborough Regional Charter School Family
Else and Irene Klee as children in Germany. Irene, the youngest child, was born
August twenty eighth, 1922.
They left because the Jews weren’t wanted. They left because their safety was in
jeapordy. They left without their parents.
Their visa was sponsored by an Aunt who had immigrated to New York in the early
1900s. Their parents’ visas were denied.
So they came alone.
Photo taken in 1939. 19 year old Else and 17 year old Irene (on right) sent this
photo to their parents who were still in Germany.
Irene and Else quickly needed to acclimate to a new country with a foreign
language. Irene obtained a job as domestic worker, with responsiblies of
cooking, cleaning & caring for children. She had no experience, she was only 16
years old, but she knew what she had to do. She was a quick learner and turned
out to be a wonderful cook. Else worked at an unskilled job at the local
Hospital. It was up to them to work and earn enough money to send for their
parents. They both learned English as a matter of necessity.
Irene met her husband, also a German Jewish immigrant, as they formed a group
of friends with a common bond. Her husband, Walter and his brother Martin had
left Germany in 1937 as jobs were difficult to find and anti-Jewish sentiment
was on the rise. Like the Klee girls they worked to send money back to Germany
to get their parents and younger sister out of Germany.
Left photo Martin & Walter Kleeman, 1917, Germany. Right photo Walter & Martin
Kleeman, 1942, New York.
In 1941 Irene’s parents came to the United States. They were fortunate, they were
one of only two longstanding Jewish families in Plaidt, Germany. Their neighbors
gave them bits of food and protected them. They were spared. Other family
members who had left Plaidt many years earlier were not so lucky. Irene’s father
lost two siblings, and her mother lost 5. They were killed, some in transport,
some at concentration camps. We will never know their stories.
Here in the United States, Irene Klee and Walter Kleeman married in 1946. They
went on to own their own business, a deli. They had one child, a daughter. That
daughter had a daughter who had one son. You may know him. His name is
Benjamin Lambrecht. He is a first grader here at FRCS.
A copy of the SS President Harding’s ship manifest for November 9, 1938. The
Klee sisters’ names appear ¼ of the page down from the top. Their destination:
America. Ellis Island. They settled in New York.
The USS President Harding, the ship the young Klee girls sailed on November 9,
1938, escaping the horrors of Kristallnacht. That exact same evening riots,
deaths and destruction rocked Germany in a pogrom against the Jewish people.
The United States Holocaust Museum’s lesson on Kristallnacht follows:
Kristallnacht: The November 1938 Pogroms
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/kristallnacht/
On November 9–10, 1938, the Nazis staged vicious pogroms—state sanctioned,
anti-Jewish riots—against the Jewish community of Germany. These came to be
known as Kristallnacht (now commonly translated as “Night of Broken Glass”), a
reference to the untold numbers of broken windows of synagogues, Jewish-owned
stores, community centers, and homes plundered and destroyed during the
pogroms. Encouraged by the Nazi regime, the rioters burned or destroyed 267
synagogues, vandalized or looted 7,500 Jewish businesses, and killed at least 91
Jewish people. They also damaged many Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools,
and homes as police and fire brigades stood aside. Kristallnacht was a turning
point in history. The pogroms marked an intensification of Nazi anti-Jewish
policy that would culminate in the Holocaust—the systematic, state-sponsored
murder of Jews. The United States Holocaust Museum calls Kristallnacht the
“spark that ignited the Holocaust”.
Irene (on right) Else and in 2005 as they looked through old family photos.
Irene’s only great-grandson, now a student at Foxborough Regional Charter
School.