MATTOON - Kristallnacht sent some people to new worlds and freedom.

On Nov. 9, 1938, 17-year-old Walter Sommers was an apprentice at an import/export office in Hamburg, Germany. He was part of a Jewish family. He was headed home from work with a Christian co-worker when they came face-to-face with some of the violent actions of Kristallnacht in that city. During a recent interview, Sommers recalled what he saw.

"It was a very ordinary day. I was on my way home, riding a bicycle. A good Christian friend who also was an apprentice at the import/export office was with me.

"As we were approaching the downtown area we noticed there was a lot of tumult. A lot of storm troopers standing around, or manhandling some people that I later found out were Jewish people.

"We saw store windows that were smashed in. We learned later on these were all owned by Jewish store owners.

"And as we traveled farther we came upon a synagogue set ablaze, with storm troopers standing around preventing the fire department from putting out the fire. And police were standing by doing nothing.

"The fire department kept the roofs watered down on the adjoining or adjacent buildings to keep them from catching fire. It was a terrible sight and I had had occasion to worship in that particular synagogue a couple of times.

"I also observed the people standing around were extremely upset and saw some of the women were crying. Obviously this was a event that was occurring that they had never felt would ever happen in Germany."

When Sommers arrived at his Hamburg apartment, his German Christian landlady warned him to leave because she feared he would be rounded up by the police or Nazis that night.

"She told me she had already heard over the radio what was going on. She said, 'You know I'd love for you to stay here but you're not really safe. The police have a record that you're living here.'"

Such records, routine in many European countries at the time, helped police or Nazis easily round up thousands of men and teenage boys across Germany.

Sommers escaped the Nazi net with the help of Romanians living in Germany, but his father was detained at a concentration camp. He was released within a few weeks, relieved that approval had come through for taking his family to America.

The Sommers family, including Walter, his parents and sisters, entered America in 1939 through New Jersey with less than $50 and some furniture. They had been forced to sell interest in their ransacked delicacy food store, the last one remaining of a chain after Nazi policies under Hitler forced sales (pennies on the dollar in many cases) of Jewish businesses throughout the country.

There was one final humiliation for the Sommers family when they came to America. Nazi officials were allowed to leave the passenger ship first as VIPs, before many Jewish refugees. Then American immigrant officials asked Sommers' parents if they were ever Communists and had ever attempted to overthrow the government in Germany.

"I know they were asked these questions because I did the translating. My parents could not believe they were being asked such questions in America."

Finding work in New York City, Sommers was working multiple jobs when America was plunged into World War II with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Expecting war to be declared soon on Germany (actually Hitler declared war on America), Sommers saw a chance to get back at his tormentors in Europe.

"I volunteered for military duty on Dec. 8, 1941. And they laughed at me, 'This is the wrong army, man.' They said I was an 'enemy alien.' I was an enemy alien because I was a German citizen.

"American citizenship was five years away. We were in the process of applying. It didn't matter if I was a German Jew forced out of Nazi Germany, I was an enemy alien in the eyes of the government.

"So, they told me to wait a few months and come back. I went back in June 1942 and they said, 'You're still an enemy alien, and you can't volunteer. But, we can draft you!' So I asked the guy there when that would probably happen and he said, 'You're in the Army now!'"

Sommers eventually served with the 77th Army Division, involved in many Pacific island invasions against the Japanese. He was with the artillery and earned many decorations. His division patch ironically was an image of the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of freedom for many people coming to America in the 20th century.

Sommers came to Terre Haute, Ind. after World War II, where he and his wife raised two children. He helped open the Meis Department Store in Mattoon decades ago. He is now a volunteer presenter at the CANDLES Holocaust Education Center in Terre Haute.

When he speaks of the Holocaust to visitors, he says he faced the beginning of it in Germany: Kristallnacht.

Herb Meeker can be reached at hmeeker@jg-tc.com or 238-6869.