Kristallnacht Brought to Life for East Students

As a respectful hush fell over the East Henderson High auditorium Monday afternoon, history teacher Todd Singer introduced special guest Kay Kadden, 95, who narrowly escaped the Holocaust and immigrated to New York from Zweibrücken, Germany in 1937.

It wasn’t Kadden’s own survival story she shared with East students Monday, but rather that of her cousin, Anna Pluethe, who penned a detailed, personal account of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, on Nov. 9-10, 1938.

“You are the first to hear this,” Singer told the students. “And you are the last generation to ever hear this from someone who survived.”

Kadden explained that she never really knew her relatives, save for the stories her grandmother would tell her, and only learned that she’d had a cousin who survived Kristallnacht decades after Kadden had moved to New York.

“I was always searching for people. People had disappeared in Germany overnight,” Kadden said. Once in New York, she said, “My first project was to look through phone books.”

She didn’t strike gold until, on a visit to Chicago to visit her daughter, Kadden searched a Chicago phone book and found a familiar name. Kadden called the number and ultimately met Pluethe’s daughter-in-law, who had a copy of Pluethe’s diary entry. Kadden had the document translated and has since shared her cousin’s story only with her friends at College Walk Retirement Community in Brevard.

Kadden read Pluethe’s story, opening with the Gestapo raiding her home and arresting her father, a Jewish lawyer, just before Kristallnacht. He had wisely left the keys to the family’s safe for Pluethe, which ultimately allowed the family to protect precious documents and items from subsequent raids on the home.

Pluethe wrote that everything in closets and drawers had been pulled out and dumped onto the floor, windows had been shattered, and bystanders advised the Pluethes’ maid to stop helping the Jewish family clean up – lest she be punished.

The Pluethes’ home was raided several more times, and Pluethe wrote, “It took three of them to rip out the heavy chandelier.” Soldiers broke any remaining intact windows, and smashed all the family’s jars of preserves and jellies. Children in the street threw rocks into homes through broken windows, “following in the steps of their parents and elders,” Pluethe wrote.

Pluethe’s father was released and, because he was a Jewish lawyer, was forced to sign papers that authorized the Nazis to confiscate Jewish families’ possessions. The family ultimately packed what essentials they could find in the rubble of their home and headed to stay with family in Berlin. A cousin in America arranged for affidavits to bring the family to America, and the Pluethes avoided further destruction in Germany.

Once Kadden finished reading her cousin’s account, she was greeted with a standing ovation from the East students, and received the rockstar treatment from teenagers who appreciated the fact that they had the dwindling opportunity to hear first-hand accounts of the Holocaust.

“This was really my dream; not to talk to old people but to talk to young people about this,” Kadden said. “Because we’re the last generation to share this.”

(Article written by Molly McGowan Gorsuch, HCPS Public Information Officer.)