AUBURN – Ernie Weiss quietly asked the audience, “Do adults remember what happened to them when they were seven years old?”

For the 77-year-old Holocaust survivor, the answer is yes.

For the audience eager to hear him speak, the response was hushed horror when he talked of his mother bearing witness to the public beheading of his aunt, uncle and cousin by Nazi soldiers.

The heart-wrenching story is one of several about his close-knit family fleeing Hitler’s regime between 1938 and 1946 included in his new book, “Out of Vienna: Eight Years of Flight from the Nazis.”

“There was a loss of family. Everyone needs to raise the importance of remembrance,” said Susan Teich, 53, of Lewiston.

Teich was among the more than 50 people gathered Sunday afternoon at the Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center to hear Weiss and fellow Holocaust survivor Ernie Wallach speak of their childhood experiences. The presentation was in observation of the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, commonly known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” which ushered in the Nazi reign of terror against European Jews during the late 1930s and 1940s.

Kristallnacht occurred Nov. 9-10, 1938, throughout Germany, Austria and Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. During the 48-hour period, rioters destroyed more than 260 synagogues and shattered the shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses. Additionally, 91 people were beaten to death and 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

While executed by Nazi soldiers and Hitler Youth members, German officials announced that the violence came in response to the assassination of a German embassy official stationed in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew. The boy’s family had been expelled from Germany and their property and possessions confiscated by the Nazis.

Like Weiss, Teich lost several family members to Hitler’s wrath during World War II that aimed to not only expel Jews from economic and social realms, but literally erase them from the face of the earth as part of the Nazi’s Final Solution.

Of the 28 family members whose history Weiss spent more than six years compiling following his mother’s death, nine died at the direct hands of the Third Reich and one committed suicide.

Wallach, too, held many memories of the Hitler’s regime deep in his heart. Like many Jewish Holocaust survivors, the Pownal man and his family embarked on a journey to Europe this past summer to retrace his family’s steps during Europe’s darkest days. His trip was made possible in part through a grant from the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“I had always hoped to one day return to the Belgium convent that kept me hidden during World War II,” Wallach said of his travels to Germany and Belgium.

Wallach explained how several convents and churches hid and protected Jewish children during the Holocaust. And while is thinks he tracked down the right convent, the building is was abandoned and he was unable to go inside. However, the journey did offer his family the chance to visit the graves, place stones and pay homage to several other family members as most of his family escaped to the United States following the war.

“I’m happy to see this presentation in our area because I think that our area is, by and large, ignorant of the facts,” said audience member Mark Cloutier, 42, of Lewiston, a member of Christians United for Israel. “In honor of everyone who died, it was great to see these two presentations.”