Kristallnacht in Words and Photographs
Edith Brickell
Fifteen years old in 1938, Brickell attended a reform-oriented school in Vienna. "In 1938, my father's company was immediately Aryanized, and I was no longer allowed to go to school. On November 10th, my father and my brother Gustl were arrested. My father was taken to a school on Kenyongasse, and when he came home after having spent a night there, his hair had turned as white as snow. Gustl was deported to the concentration camp in Dachau.
It is hard to grasp today how my father didn't realize what was going on. Perhaps it was because they sent him home again. I also think that my father was already tired (of moving around). As a young man he had gone to Japan, then returned to Vienna; maybe he just didn't want to move and start all over again. My father once said, and I remember this precisely, 'I have never done anyone any harm; no one will do me any harm either.' That was his attitude."