185: The Early Holocaust: From the “Jewish Question” to Kristallnacht
History That Doesn't Suck
ProfGregJackson
4.5 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | It's a beautiful Saturday morning, May 13, 1939. |
| 0:14.5 | We're in Hamburg, Germany, at the city's port, where 937 passengers are in the midst of boarding the MS. St. Louis. Among them is |
| 0:23.5 | Gisela Knappel, and what thoughts must be going through her young mind? Though only 15 years old, |
| 0:31.0 | she remembers when, despite having one loving teacher who'd remind students that Gisela was no different |
| 0:36.8 | from them. |
| 0:40.2 | She had to transfer to an all-Jewish school. |
| 0:45.6 | She remembers when the SS man started standing in front of her parents' grocery store to drive away business. |
| 0:47.5 | Only the bravest, like their Catholic neighbor, the baker, dared to push past him. |
| 0:53.4 | She remembers when friends and family described |
| 0:55.8 | last year's night of broken glass, a night of terror for German Jews that she luckily did not |
| 1:01.9 | experience personally. She remembers the day when two men ordered her Polish-born father to pack a bag, |
| 1:09.1 | grab his passport, and go with them. Gieselah will always remember |
| 1:13.5 | making him those last sandwiches for his unknown journey. Just as she'll never forget how her |
| 1:19.5 | mother fought in the courts against their eviction so a German couple could take their apartment. |
| 1:25.1 | A German couple. Are they not German? |
| 1:30.3 | Giesla was born and raised here. |
| 1:31.9 | But in recent years, |
| 1:34.6 | the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Jewish girl has seen that identity taken from him systematically. |
| 1:38.6 | Nonetheless, she's only 15. |
| 1:41.2 | A 15-year-old with wonderfully brave parents who've shielded her and her little |
| 1:46.0 | sister from the worst of what's been going on. |
| 1:48.0 | It's a task her mother has shouldered remarkably well since her father's deportation. |
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