Événement

Shattered Glass-Witnesses to Bigotry and Tyranny -- Paul & Marion Wolff

As political refugees from the tyranny of Nazi Europe, Paul and Marion Wolff want to share lessons learned and stories about their miraculous journey from 1938 Hamburg and Vienna to 2019 San Luis Obispo. They will also ask you to help us explore bigotry and intolerance as we experience these issues today.

Now is the time for reflection! We recently passed the 80th anniversary of the overt violent national manifestation of prejudice known as the Kristallnacht pogrom of Germany on 9-10 November, 1938.

As civil rights in fascist Germany began to disappear in late 1936, Marion's father decided that he and his wife and daughter should flee to Prague and then to Vienna for safety. After her young father died shortly after their arrival in Vienna, Marion witnessed Austrias enthusiastic annexation to Nazi Germany and the infamous Night of Broken Glass. She was rescued from the ensuing Holocaust by being included, at age 8, in the very first experimental Kindertransport from Vienna to England, on December 10, 1938. She was fostered by a Quaker family in York, England and later attended a Quaker co-educational boarding school, which greatly influenced the rest of her life.

Paul Wolff was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1929. After his sisters left on the Kindertransport, he was able to leave for London with his parents in 1939, arriving in San Francisco on August 1, 1939, a mere 30 days before the start of WW II in Europe.

Marion and Paul remember that these people were not backward or unsophisticated. They were major contributors to the cultural and scientific creativity of central Europe at that time. Yet, tyranny emerged there to cause unprecedented death and destruction for the following seven years.
Today, we seem quite capable of similar actions of discrimination and prejudice. To quote Nicholas Bentley: Learning history is easy; learning its lessons seems almost impossibly difficult.