She was the daughter of assimilated Viennese Jews , during the Anschluss in March 1938 . She watched from a dressmaker ’s shop on Tempelgasse in November on Kristallnacht , as Nazi soldiers and ordinary Austrian citizens torched Vienna ’s largest synagogue . She was separated from her parents , and fled to a children ’s homes near Brussels , and then , to Toulouse in southern France in a boxcar . She acquired transit visas , shepherding her brother on a perilous voyage from France through Spain to Lisbon and thence on the S.S. Excalibur to New York City , and reunification with their parents
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Edith Kurzweil