A Baker's Delivery Boy

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"My father was about eleven when Hitler came to power, and he had been enrolled in a school in Treuchtlingen, and was studying. And when he was 13 he became a Bar Mitzvah, and then the German government shut down the school that he was attending, the family decided that they needed to be in a place that had more Jews, so they moved to Munich, which was not that far from Treuchtlingen, but it was a major city.

And my father graduated from eighth grade, and then there was a special school that was started for older children, and he attended that in ninth grade. It was taught by professors from the university that were Jewish that had been fired. And he tells me-- or he told me-- that Henry Kissinger’s uncle was one of his teachers. And after the ninth grade, he wasn’t able to attend school any longer.

And so his father knew of a person that owned a restaurant-- he wasn’t jewish-- in Munich that was very well-thought-of, and he was starting a school for confectionary and baking technicians. And so my father attended that school. And he became very, very proficient in his trade.

And then my grandfather said that he needed some practical experience, and he had a friend that was a baker, and he convinced him, even though they wouldn’t pay him, that he’d like to get some practical experience for his son. So my father would get up at 4:00 in the morning and would ride his bicycle to another part of Munich where he would pick up breads, and cakes, and pastry and deliver them to private homes, and to restaurants and hotels and so-forth.

And so on Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938, he got up as normal and rode to the bakery, and he didn’t notice anything unusual. He picked up the breads, and so-forth, that he was supposed to, and delivered them to the various locations. And he did say that because his route was in another part of Munich, there were no synagogues on that side of town, or any Jewish businesses, so he wasn’t aware until he got back home, back to the bakery around 7:00 in the morning, that anything had occurred."