Murmelstein became deputy chairman of the Jewish Council of Elders in Vienna , a group created by the Nazis , and for years was involved in Eichmann 's work to remove Jews from Austria , witnessing the Nazi policies firsthand . In his interviews with Lanzmann decades later , he revealed that he had observed Eichmann , armed with a crowbar , organizing the destruction of Vienna 's Seitenstettengasse synagogue during the Kristallnacht pogrom . He worked with the IKG to help over 125,000 Jews leave the country by 1941 , but in that year the Germans began closing the borders as their emigration policies were evolving towards the ultimate end of internment . In 1943 , Murmelstein was himself interned in the camp of Theresienstadt , or Terezin , in a former Czechoslovakian fortress
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Benjamin Murmelstein