Two-year-old Edith Heine watched as blood pooled and snaked across the white tiles of her home.
Moments earlier, two Gestapo men had kicked down the 400-year-old door of her family’s house and brutally tortured the family’s housemate. As the men dragged the body of the woman to a green van outside, Heine and her parents fled through the back door.
For the next five years, the three moved from one hiding place to another until World War II ended.
“Just helping Jews in any way was a crime punishable by death,” Heine said during the city of Berkeley’s 18th annual Holocaust Remembrance Day Program on April 8. “My mother taught me about the dangers by explaining to me if you speak, cry or make any noise then we will end up like the woman on the white tile floor, tortured and dead.”