Fritz Ottenheimer awoke to the sound of an explosion.
He looked out a window, expecting to find the fueling station near his home in Constance, Germany, on fire.
But the gas station wasn't ablaze, Ottenheimer remembers. The community's synagogue was.
That morning, Nov. 10, 1938, when Ottenheimer was 13, Adolf Hitler and his Gestapo had come for the Jews.
On Tuesday evening, Ottenheimer, of Forest Hills, Allegheny County, recalled Kristallnacht, "the night of broken glass," at a remembrance service held as part of the Holocaust Education Conference at Seton Hill University in Greensburg. The event was sponsored by the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education.
During the solemn interfaith service, six candles were lighted in memory of the 6 million Jews, 1.5 million children among them, who were taken away and executed as part of Hitler's Final Solution.
Candles were lighted for those who risked their lives to help their neighbors, and for those who died for being different.
Ottenheimer, the primary speaker at the remembrance, was joined at the service by four other Holocaust survivors -- Robert Mendler, Shulamit Bastacky, Jack Sittsamer and Sam Weinreb.
Remembering that morning 68 years ago, Ottenheimer recalled hearing and seeing men being rounded up.
"It seemed that all the men had been arrested by the Germans," he said.
All the men except for Ottenheimer's father, who was still in the house. Ottenheimer wondered why the Gestapo had not come for his father, who once owned a menswear store.
Maybe it was because his father was a German hero in World War I, Ottenheimer remembered thinking.
Another theory came to mind: The family had moved recently, and maybe the Germans didn't know their new address.
Ottenheimer wasn't sure which theory was right, but he got his answer soon enough.
"A couple hours later, there was a big pounding on the door," Ottenheimer said.
The Gestapo took Ottenheimer's father, Ludwig, away.
"There were no charges. There were no accusations of wrongdoing. The only crime ... was being born into a Jewish family," Ottenheimer said.
As his father was led away, Ottenheimer said he wondered "if we would ever see him again ... or if they'd come back and get the rest of us."
The family went on living as well as they could.
About a month after his father was led away, Ottenheimer said, another knock came on the door, one he described as faint.
His father was "just barely standing there," Ottenheimer said, ravaged by sickness after being held at the Dachau concentration camp.
Ludwig Ottenheimer recovered, and the family received permission to immigrate to the United States.
Ottenheimer went on to join the U.S. Army and returned to Germany in the waning days of World War II.
He wrote a book about his remembrances, "Escape and Return." The autobiographical account reflects his lifelong struggles from youth to soldier, to a veteran thinking back about what happened.
Looking back last night, Ottenheimer said Kristallnacht was so important because the world didn't object immediately and it "opened the door to Hitler, to the Final Solution."
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