Out of Broken Glass

A Memoir of Renewal

Out of Broken Glass is the true story of a young German Jewish boy who endures and overcomes Nazi terror and hardship and finds himself a lonely refugee among strangers in wartime England. Orphaned by the Holocaust, he comes to America where he serves in the U.S military and then converts an eight grade education into two college degrees and a successful professional career. He creates his own family, leads a colorful life that features extraordinary experiences and challenges to his past and to his faith and values. This is the uplifting memoir of Sel Hubert whose tranquil village life in Cronheim is shattered by the Nazis when, as a ten-year old, he is assaulted by his classmates and forced out of his school. Sent to live with strangers in Nrnberg, he becomes immersed in an Orthodox lifestyle and attends the Jewish school where he thrives scholastically. Caught up in the frenzy of a huge Nazi political rally, Sel maneuvers himself to look into the steely eyes of Adolf Hitler but escapes unhurt. No longer able to work and pay for Sels lodging, his father has to bring him home, only to live through the terror of Kristallnacht when the Nazis invade and trash their house and arrest his father who is sent to the notorious Dachau concentration camp. Devastated by that ordeal, Sel and his mother plead with the U.S. consulate for his fathers release and for permission to emigrate to the U.S. but are turned away. Expelled from their village, the family finds refuge with relatives in Augsburg, living in constant fear of further terror and arrest while trying desperately to flee Germany by any legal means. Suddenly, an offer comes to send just one child to safety in England on the Kindertransport. The Huberts face a cruel choice: which of their two children should they save -- thirteen year-old Sel or his older sister Emma? After a gut-wrenching family discussion, she is chosen in the hope that she can better help to secure a subsequent Kindertransport escape for him, which fortunately happens three months later. Sel bids an emotional farewell to his distraught mother and then travels with his father to the Munich railway station platform where he and hundreds of children say tearful good-bys before boarding a special train that takes them away from their parents, forever for most. He embarks on the terrifying lonely journey to freedom, not knowing where or with whom he will live and is taken in by a Jewish family King in London who makes him feel safe and welcome and restores his broken spirits. He develops close relationships with them and with the synagogue that sponsored his rescue and he writes reassuring letters home to his parents. But after only 6 weeks, he is again uprooted when, as war threatens, the government evacuates him with his school into the countryside where he is assigned to live with a childless Christian couple in a small village that has no Jews. War breaks out and his fears about the fate of his parents trapped in Germany escalate when he learns that they were sent away. Lonely and yearning for religious sustenance, he seeks spiritual comfort by attending a church service where his Jewish soul is unexpectedly renewed and nourished. Too proud to remain on charitable support, he quits school and starts to work in an office at age fourteen. He later moves into a hostel for Kindertransport refugees in Cambridge where he feels rejuvenated among his own peers and learns to become a motor mechanic. He turns down an offer to enter an Orthodox rabbinic school, reluctant to embrace and commit to such a lifestyle. Early in 1945, he crosses the U-Boat infested Atlantic to accept an invitation to live with relatives in New York where he joins the US Army Air Corps (now U.S. Air Force) and attains US citizenship. As sergeant in the Air Transport Command, he personally pleads with Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson to administer justice as he boards his military flight to be Chief Prosecutor of the top Nazis