Issue: 2.10 | October 1, 2001 | by:
Julie Wiener
|
||||
9-11 Evokes Memories of Kristallnacht Until last month there was always one seminal date in Fred Gompertz's memory:
November 9. On that day in 1938, Gompertz, then 14, woke in the middle of the night to "a
tremendous explosion of glass." While he hid upstairs in his family's apartment in the German town of
Gelsenkirchen, Nazi thugs vandalized and ransacked his father's clothing store
below. "We were scared to look out the window," he says, "scared to be seen." Kristallnacht — the "Night of Broken Glass" — heralded the end of Gompertz's
life in Germany. While his family was fortunate enough to escape to the United
States and build new lives here — Gompertz became a globe- trotting fur designer
— he never forgot the fear, the broken glass and the pain of being uprooted from
his home. Almost 63 years later, Gompertz has again been uprooted from his home, a
34th-story apartment in Battery Park City, an upscale, meticulously landscaped
development overlooking New York Harbor — and just yards away from the World
Trade Center. For now, the events of Sept. 11 — which came as Gompertz was sitting at his
kitchen table, reading the newspaper — remain a whirl of disconnected,
nightmarish fragments. A phone call, in which a friend in Connecticut suggested he come stay with
him for a while. Peering out the window and seeing a swarm of people on the
esplanade outside, some running, some with faces turned upward in horror. Flames
coming out of the World Trade Center's twin towers. Reports on television about a terrorist attack. Then everything going dark —
the window covered in a cloud of black soot, the television going dead, all
electricity stopping. "There was nothing to see," he recalled. "Just black." Gompertz remained in his apartment for almost two days, until his son — who
first was told that Gompertz had been evacuated to a New Jersey shelter — came
in to rescue him. He is not sure what happened in those two days or why he stayed put. He
recalls passing out at one point and falling asleep "to escape." Unable to get up, he kept thinking about what he'd been told in kindergarten
in Germany: If something unusual happens, just stay where you are so your
parents will know where to find you. He remembers listening to a portable, battery-operated radio and hearing that
Battery Park City had been evacuated. He peered into the hall, but it was dark
and eerily quiet, and he "didn't dare" venture down the more than 30 flights of
stairs in the dark. The experience "brings me back to November 9," Gompertz says several weeks
later in an interview with JTA at the Tribeca hotel where he is staying
temporarily. He darts back and forth across the years, from Nov. 9 to Sept. 11, stopping
at one point to talk about a recent visit to his hometown at the German
government's invitation. Suddenly he is back in the present, noting how his son recently got close to
the ruins of the World Financial Center's Winter Garden, a huge glass atrium
that until Sept. 11 was filled with palm trees and a bustling shopping center.
"It was all flattened," he said. "It's just horrible to believe." Impeccably dressed in a stylish wool jacket and matching black pants,
Gompertz looks at least a decade younger than his 77 years. But he still is
feeling disoriented, tired and unable to concentrate, overwhelmed by even minor
decisions. Kristallnacht "was a totally different experience but maybe it prepared me
for such a shock," Gompertz says, his English still bearing traces of a German
accent. "I was more hurt than angry then," he says. "When you're small, you see it
differently. You're not totally conscious of what's going on." Now, he says, his main emotion is anger at "these stupid idiot bastard
terrorists." "They destroyed my neighborhood," he says. "It was the best place to live in
Manhattan. Now, even if they rebuild it, it will never be the same." |
||||||
|
||||||
Julie Wieneris a correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. She can be contacted at jwiener@jta.org |
||||||
|
||||||