Henry Oertelt's Talk
to the Pommern Regional Group
July 25th, 2006
The Berlin Synagogue burning on Kristallnacht November 9th, 1938
The Story of Henry Oertelt
Born in 1921 in Berlin, Henry could trace his family back 200 years
in Germany. His father died when he was two. He had a mother and
brother. The Versailles Treaty after the WWI defeat of Germany
specified that they could not make weapons anymore. All the weapons
factories were closed. This affected other areas of the economy.
There was 40% unemployment. When Hitler came to power he was looking
for a scapegoat for the misery. Many people did not know Jews
personally.
A ballot was projected showing 28 different political parties. There
were new elections every few months because the governments could
not improve the lot of the people. Hitler wrote, “Mein Kampf,” in
1923. At first he did not propose killing Jews, but rather, shipping
them off to the island of Madagascar. Early national socialism
members were called brownshirts. They drove or marched down the
streets singing a song, “When the blood of the Jews squirts from our
knives things will be twice as good.” Henry said to his
mother, “Aren’t we Jews? Aren’t they talking about us?” His mother
said not to pay attention to, “those hooligans.”
After many elections the National Socialist Party did receive the
most votes and Hindenburg died. Hitler said you will have work,
food, and will be happy. Germany started to build u-boats and and
planes immediately. Unemployment was gone in a month. People said
that Hitler was the first politician who kept his word. Jewish shop
owners were beaten in public. Some people shook their heads and
others egged them on. The police were there not doing anything.
The secret police was created and the first camp, Dachau was built
just two months into power. All other political parties were
prohibited. And Hilter named himself the Führer. Some political
parties were 300 years old. People learned quickly not to make any
noise when political party headquarters were robbed, burned, trashed
and party leaders imprisoned in camps. 35% had voted for the
national socialist party but this was not a majority of the German
people. Also people knew there was now a camp in Berlin
called, “Oranienburg.” Henry was 12 at this time.
Things started to change. Now his homework was not corrected or
graded in school. When he raised a hand to answer a question, he was
not called upon. Jewish students were ignored. They were not allowed
to participate in music anymore. Sometimes these conditions were
presented as or accepted as temporary. Henry had been captain of the
soccer team. His team was one of the top five in Berlin. He was now
sitting on the bench as his team was losing. When he complained he
was kicked off the team by the coach who called him a, “damn Jew.”
Henry said to our group, “Can you imagine talking that way to a 13
year old kid?”
At 14 ½ he was dismissed from school. The principal asked him to
collect his things from his desk and go home. He did not want to do
this while class was in session, but he had to. As he collected his
things and spun around to leave, his foot caught a desk leg, he
tripped and he, and all the books fell to the floor. The kids found
this immensely funny and all were laughing, but not him.
When he got home from school his mother was there. “Why aren’t you
at work?” he asked. She had been fired two days earlier. The Führer
said that any Christian could fire a Jew, no questions asked. A
friend of hers asked how things were going and she admitted she was
tired of having Henry at home all day. He offered Henry a position
at this furniture company designing and making fine furniture and he
accepted.
Restrictions made life tougher for the Jews in Germany. Jews could
only shop between 2-4 pm. They could not be on the streets after
8pm. They could not be away from home at night. They could not go to
public places like theaters, sports stadiums, libraries, beaches,
parks, and restaurants! Some Jews paid no attention to these
restrictions and the authorities realized there was no way to tell
that someone was a Jew or not. So they came up with the yellow
fabric, Star of David, that had to be sewn onto one’s clothing.
Henry said you could by the stars from your friendly neighborhood
Nazi store. Hitler Youth groups were created. One could be in the
Hitler Youth at 6 years old. Along with the uniform came a knife
that said, “Blood and Honor,” on it.
An incident happened that changed history. A Jewish man in Paris
learned that his parents had been beaten. He went to the German
Embassy and shot an official who died two days later. This caused
the German government to launch Kristallnacht on November 9th, 1938
as a revenge for the killing. The world did not complain about the
re-militarization or Kristallnacht. Austria and the Sudetenland were
claimed in 1938. Chamberlain of England said they had averted a
world war, a month later, Kristallnacht.
Henry was 17 now.
Germany invaded Poland Sept. 1, 1939, and war was declared by France
and England. Now there were extermination camps. Jewish families
disappeared one by one. In 1943 Henry was 22 years old. All of his
family and friends had disappeared. On June 16th, 1943, in the
middle of the night, we were taken away to Theresienstadt in
Czechoslovakia. This was actually considered a, “milder,” camp.
Of 15,000 children, 16 and under, 100 survived in three years. There
was a brown soup for morning coffee and soup and bread for lunch.
People died left and right, especially the elderly. Henry was there
13 or 14 months. Then 4000 assembled at the trainstation and got
onto trains, packed so tightly no one could sit. Two or three died
right in the middle of the train car. There was no food, water, or
toilets for two and a half days. The train went to Auschwitz, the
worst camp of all. By now 30-35 had died of the 80 in the car.
Children 13 and under were separated. Guards said they were going to
nurseries and school. Trucks picked up the kids and transported them
to the gas chambers where they were killed, then burned. At
Auschwitz alone 1.5 million people were exterminated. 87,000 were
Polish Christians, 30,000 gypsies, 10,000 homosexuals, and thousands
of Jehovah’s Witnesses who stood up to Hitler as a group. 1.25
million were Jews and 400-500 thousand of those were kids.
Henry said it was a crush of hatred over what you were born. No one
has control over who they are born to. Old folks were separated and
killed because they could not work. At the Birkenau camp they had to
shower and then walk out into the cold October night air to dry off,
get their hair shaved off and have numbers tattooed onto their
forearms. His was B-11291. One was not to refer to their name
anymore but to their number. This was the final de-humanization, no
clothes, no jewelry, no name. They owned nothing.
A soup bowl used upside down served as a pillow. One also used a
filthy blanket. Every night you slept in a different bunk. One had
to have the will to survive. “We knew the war was not going well for
Germany.” One building was a solid row of toilets with rats
underneath. He was in Auschwitz for 5 months. Then they were marched
for 4 days in January to trains that took them to Sachsenhausen for
two weeks, then to Flossenburg in the beginning of Feb. 1945. By
this point there were no supplies, not even for the Germans. One day
you might get soup, the next day not. Allied planes had bombed
around the camp so there was no work to do.
The noises of war got closer and closer. 17,000 men were ordered out
1,000 at a time. People were weak and sick. If you fell you were
shot to death. We were liberated on the march two and a half days
later. Henry weighed 82 lbs. They were liberated by General Patton’s Army.
There was a question and answer session after his talk:
After the war the American’s pumped food and aid into Germany, and
the Red Cross took over care of the camp victims. Local farmers had
to take in Jews and care for them too.
Today he has no hatred of Germans. Only he and his brother survived.
It was treason to associate with a Jew, so some of the people in the
camps were Germans who had helped Jews.
Learning the furniture trade saved his life. He was able to work in
the camp shop designing and making furniture. Pushing a pencil
around on a blueprint used up quite less calories than digging ditches.
He was 28 years old when he came to America and he could not speak a
word of English.
The Berlin Synagogue rebuilt
Henry has written a book about his ordeal called, “An Unbroken
Chain: My Journey through the Nazi Holocaust.” His book talks about
18 points of luck that allowed him to survive. If any of the
18, “links,” had not happened then the chain would be broken and he
would not have survived.
To look up additional information about Henry Oertelt on the internet:
1) URL: www.chgs.umn.edu
2) click Virtual Museum...
3) scroll down left side column to "Henry Oertelt" (12th item)
4) after getting all the info about the Unbroken Chain - click on
View Image Gallery ENTER HERE (a little below the picture of the book title)
5) for additional images of original documents/pictures click yellow
triangles (arrows) on bottom of text - or click any of the left-side boxes
Greetings to all,
Henry