Critical Thinking/Discussion Questions - Inge Lowenstein

1. Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, is a prominent memory of Inge Lowenstein. During this pogrom, Nazis wreaked havoc on the Jewish population of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Throughout her filmed testimony she describes her family’s experiences during Kristallnacht. Compare the experiences of Inge Loewenstein and of Eric Rosenfeld, another Tennessean, based on their filmed testimony.
2. During her filmed testimony, Inge describes how during Kristallnacht her mother pleaded with Nazi officials not to take Inge’s father to Dachau Concentration Camp. She recalled, “My mother tells this so much better, but what happened was that she carried on about him fighting in the war for the Germans and all that kind of stuff and almost losing his leg and now they want to take him to a concentration camp…  And so, this one guy finally told her, ‘Calm down, calm down, if whatever you say is true, he can go back with you.’ So, he was…she went with him but she had to wait outside. And when he came out, what happened in there, he had to undress and show the guys all his wounds from the war, and he was very lucky.” Many Jewish men felt that their service to Germany during World War I would help to protect them from the Nazi persecution.  Compare Inge’s father’s experience with Clark Blatteis’s father’s experience.