The stories of two Holocaust survivors in Southwest Florida

Tuesday marks the night when 83 years ago the Nazis set off what was supposed to look like an unplanned attack on tens of thousands of Jews.

Known as Kristallnacht, or “Night of the Broken Glass,” on Nov. 9. 1928, Nazis torched synagogues and vandalized Jewish homes, businesses, schools, and killed close to 100 Jews, according to History.com. 

Two days from now the nation honors veterans who have fought in wars including World War II and helped defeat the Nazis.

WINK News is marking the date by introducing you to two people with ties to the area who have first-hand accounts of the atrocities so many men and women risked their lives to bring to an end.

Heinz Wartski was born in 1929.

“My first memories are at an age of five when the nazis were already in power,” Wartski said.

Wartski is a Holocaust survivor.

“Well, it was a bit scary; we grew up with that,” Wartski said. “They were very hostile to us. And they were singing songs, how they are going to annihilate us, essentially you know, they were going to carve us up with long knives.”

“They’re gonna kill us,” Wartski said.

Wartski said they broke into jewelry stores and Jewish homes.

“Then they arrested adult Jewish males,” Wartski said.

Wartski was a child and the concentration camps were not ready, but they sent his father to a lower-scale concentration camp, he said.

Judit Price, Holocaust survivor, said her earliest memories as a two or three-year-old are of her father crying.

“He wasn’t the kind of man who cried,” Price said. “My father was in a slave labor camp. I know he jumped off the train on his way to Auschwitz. How brave he was.”

He hid in a Hungarian farmer’s barn but eventually, a neighbor denounced him, Price said.

“That’s where they got him.”

Watch the interviews of Wartski and Price in the video player above.

To read about more survivors and their testimonies, visit the Holocaust Museum and Cohen Education Center’s website.