The family traced their German roots back at least two centuries . Ellen 's great grandfather had been granted citizenship ( at a time when German Jews did not automatically qualify for it ) because he had fought valiantly in the armies confronting Napoleon at the start of the nineteenth century . There was pride in German culture , and before 1933 not too much reason to consider themselves politically or socially separated from other Germans . Even though she would spend most of her life living in a Spanish speaking country , when looking for literary quotes it was to Schiller and Goethe that she would always instinctively turn . At the same time , her Social Democratic mother would have shunned the shrill nationalism that had become a feature of political life since 1919 . The Nazis had taken power early in 1933 and rapidly transformed Germany into a one-party dictatorship . Antisemitism was integrated into public policy and became progressively more oppressive for those affected . After the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938 Isidor Pinkus lost his customers . The day after the pogrom she was handed a letter at school addressed to her father from the mayor of Berlin in which Ellen 's father was requested to remove her from the school . One teacher called her aside and whispered that he wished her " all the best " , while other teachers and fellow-pupils looked away . For Jewish pupils , exclusion from the school turned out to be permanent . She never had an opportunity to sit for her school final exams ( '' Abitur '' ) , and despite later attempts to catch up after she had left Germany , she would never succeed in completing her schooling
Kristallnacht pogrom
Kristallnacht
Ellen Marx (human rights activist)