Charlotte Arpadi Baum’s family ran a popular Hungarian restaurant in Berlin. Only sixteen at the time, she writes about this time in her memoir, Hate Vanquished, Lives Remembered (Library of the Holocaust 2022):

“We were allowed to keep our passports, but it was stamped with a “J.” We also received new middle names; women had to add “Sarah” and the men “Israel” after their first name.

“My father was on friendly terms with many people in our area, among them the precinct police, as our restaurant was well known. At dawn on that morning [November 9th] my father received a call from the police chief, warning him not to open the restaurant, which my father was in the habit of doing every day at 6 a.m. The police chief warned him that his life might be endangered. My father, not realizing the extent of the seriousness of his situation, did not listen and proceeded to open the door, not knowing that a mob was waiting outside ready to attack him and to destroy our restaurant. He managed to slam the door shut, escaped through the back entrance, and came home. Fortunately, we lived around the corner, a short walk from the business. The brown shirted SA men, equipped with guns, tore through the streets looking for Jewish men and my father was lucky that he was not killed. We did not dare to stay in our apartment for fear that the SA men might still be looking for him. Elderly neighbors offered to hide my father and my brother in their apartment. These kind, courageous Germans, whose name was Vanderbank, lived a few floors above us. One of our employees, a lovely lady, agreed to hide my mother and me and we spent several days in an attic space. We felt safe with her; her husband was a member of the Nazi party. His uniform hung in the closet -- he was a Nazi in name only.”