I looked out from the balcony. In Berlin it went round very quickly. The gossip. The talk. The streets started to fill with people opposite our shop. They waited. The Nazis are always very timely. If they say 7, it’s not 1 minute past or 1 minute before: it’s 7. I could hear them marching & singing. They marched to the shop… whistling. Threw the first stones & bricks at the window. The stones & bricks bounced back. Nothing broke.

So they went two doors away to the butcher’s shop & said, ‘Can we borrow your heavy weights to break the Yids windows?’ He says ‘Get out!’ So instead they smashed his glass counter & knocked him down, unconscious. Took the heavy weights & smashed our window. I knew my parents were in there. They picked up glass & threw it through the window at–I presumed–my parents. I screamed… & screamed & screamed. It left me with a hoarse voice that’s been with me ever since. I call it ‘My present from Adolf’. A papilloma on the vocal cords.

My father took me actually to a professor. He admitted that he had helped Hitler with the same problem. Cause he was screaming as well I suppose, Hitler was, with those speeches. And he then said, “Are you getting out, Herr Izbicki?” My father said, “Yes.”