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In her book The Way It Was: not so long ago in a country not so far away, Hilde Wohl Adler describes growing up as a German Jew in Nuremberg in the 1930s. The early years were, in her words, “quite an amazing life, and a good life.” But it all changed when Hitler came to power. In 1938 her family fled, with almost nothing in hand, to Switzerland, managing to find refuge in England and then eventually the U.S.
At the very start of the book, Adler has a conversation with herself, the author. She asks herself why she wrote this memoir, and then responds, “I don't know. Probably I shouldn’t have written it… because I was too lucky… because nothing happened to me.” But in writing it down, her intention was to honor her parents as well as to remember a way of life that German Jews created over generations, before the Holocaust.
The first ten chapters include sweet, lively descriptions of her family members, pets, schools, holidays, and day-to-day life. But then, life in Nazi Germany is upended in chapter 11, entitled “Change.” As a 10-year-old child, she describes witnessing Kristallnacht in her own home, when soldiers barged into the house and smashed everything in sight. (See chapter 12 “Kristall Nacht”).
As an aside, the logical next step for this reader was to look up how many people, places, and cities were targeted by the Nazis on that night. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website:
Kristallnacht, often referred to in English as the “Night of Broken Glass,” was a violent pogrom (anti-Jewish riot). It took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 throughout Germany, which by then included both Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. During Kristallnacht, Nazis burned more than 1,400 synagogues, vandalized thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, broke into Jewish people’s apartments and homes, and desecrated Jewish religious objects. They also humiliated, assaulted, and killed Jewish people. As part of Kristallnacht, the German police imprisoned about 26,000 Jewish men in concentration camps just because they were Jewish.
Hilde Adler’s book was self-published in 2011 and underwent several reprints (2012 and 2015) due to popular demand. In 2024 the author ordered a Digital Book version. The digital format enables anyone with the link to read her story. It is an open-source (free) edition, and an essential read. In her words:
With the recent rise of anti-semitism worldwide, I think my story has new relevance, and I feel that I now have an obligation to “witness” while I still can. This story is true. I was there and I remember it. Everything I have described really happened. History often repeats itself. Let us be vigilant.
Click here for Adler’s Author Page and here for the Digital Book.
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