A personal report by Heinz Landwirth, formerly from Vienna, who came with a children's transport to Holland in December 1938. He stayed first in a Children's Home, later with families. In 1941 he made Youth Aliyah to the Hachscharah-Farm Gouda. In 1942 the persecution of Jews became more and more threatening. This report includes details of an escape of a group of 25 young Zionists to Israel through Spain!. Amsterdam assumed an aspect of decay, inhibition and terror. Final razzia, including all Jews, on 20 June 1943. Mr Landwirth, meanwhile was 16-years-old, and went underground using false documents supplied by Hechaluz (Kurt Reilinger Gideon Drach) working as a farm hand with Jan Kuperus. In 1943 - via Belgium - he became known as the ‘Dutch’ boatsman John Gerrit Overbeck on one of the German Rhine barges.

In September 1938 Mrs Godin-Hirschfeld, together with her parents, brother and grandmother, emigrated from Vienna to Antwerp. In May 1940 her brother was taken to the Blechhammer concentration camp where he stayed until the beginning of 1945. He perished two days before the liberation during the so-called death-march. The rest of the family moved to Brussels.

Mrs Godin-Hirschfeld married in 1941, a daughter was born in 1942. The family lived “Underground”. The crying of the baby constituted a constant danger. It was only after 26 months that the child was taken out into the street for the first time.

Mrs Milman, née Büchler, was born in 1928 in Puchow in Czechoslovakia. In 1942 both her brothers were deported. Livia herself went into hiding, escaping from place to place, and on several occasions living in the open forest. Once she was given refuge by the wife of a Policeman, though without the latter’s knowledge.

In Modva she attended a Protestant girl’s boarding school, which had taken on a group of converted Jewish girls. Many of these were taken away by the SD in 1944.

Mrs Milman, together with 60 other Jews was hidden by farmers in a forest near Piestany until the end of the war.

Mrs Rieger's child was taken from a Jewish home in Berlin and put to death; this was about 1939. Mrs Rieger was drafted for forced labour and worked at the firm of “Auto Kabel”, where she was treated very kindly by the Lady Foreman, a Mrs Brand, as well as by the head of the firm.

In 1943 she went to live in hiding, working illegally for the film author Axel Eggebrecht.

Finally she was arrested and taken first to Auschwitz, then to Bergen Belsen, and finally to Salzwedel. From the last named camp she was liberated by the Americans.

Personal report. When the author was about ten years old, the family would be blackmailed by an SA-man, so that they moved into another district to escape from him. In the Margareten-Lyzeum, Ifflandstrasse, attended by 14 Jewish girls, the atmosphere was so antisemitic, that she left the school after some months. She attended a Jewish school until October 1937, and as she hoped to emigrate, went in for dressmaking. Compulsory work: Moeller, Children's Coats, Schützenstrasse (p.2). With the Fabrikaktion, her parents were deported to Auschwitz; on the way, her mother threw a postcard out of the wagon, which was sent to Berlin in an envelope with the words added: “Eine Frau, die noch menschlich denkt”. There came no further sign of life from them; but her brother, an electrician, survived the camp (p.3).

In February 1943, the author went into hiding; she lived with Turkish Jews whose daughter was her friend. Through a Jewish informer, Rechtsanwalt Jacob, they were found out; during the house-search, the Jewish informer Behrend fell in love with the author which circumstance she utilised to escape from the Gestapo as well as from him. Through her customer Lola Alexander she found refuge in the family Daene's house at Conradshöhe, where Miss Alexander and other Jews already lived illegally, in August 1943 (p.3-5). She started to manage the Dänes’ lending library in Moabit and would meet her friend on their way home at the S-Bahn Station Gesundbrunnen, every night. There, on 8 August 1944, she suddenly felt her arm grasped by the informer Behrend. She threw herself under an incoming train and was rescued with her foot smashed (p.6). She lay in the Jewish Hospital dangerously ill, for many months; Dr. Lustig rescued her from being sent to Auschwitz through a very long treatment instead of an amputation (p.7-8). Fever and starvation; living in the cellar. When all patients were released, on 29 April, she was too weak to leave, weighing 31kg, and had to stay on until 30 June 1945, then protected and assisted efficiently by the Russians.

A vivid report on illegal life in Holland by Mrs Selma Frank. Mrs Frank lived in Rotterdam until September 1940 when all Jews of foreign extraction had to leave the costal zone of 40 km. in width. She went as a housekeeper to the Marcus family in Zwolle. They became great friends and Mrs Frank was treated as a member of the family. Already in October 1940 the razzias on Jews started and quite a number of well-to-do business men disappeared. Mr Marcus decided to go underground and though he came secretly home from time to time he did not openly return before 27 April 1945. In the beginning he was regularly called for by the Sicherheitspolizei. His wife became deputy manager of his firm at Zwolle and its branch in the Hague had a very unpleasant time. All anti-Jewish-Measures - the David’s Shield; special Jewish food rations; prohibition to use public conveyances; curfew; deportations (Westerbork) - which in Germany were gradually introduced during 5 years, were imposed on Holland within a year. In autumn 1942 the whole Marcus family (including Mr Marcus) went underground under the name of Gelderland (forged papers). They stayed at a remote village in the country - Hoogkeppel - in a small boarding house. But this idyll did not last very long. In May 1943 they had to leave because the son of their hosts, a policeman, was afraid of the danger for his parents. Now the family split up. Mrs Frank, after several changes of place, went to Noordwolte as a ‘friend’ of a large family with 4 children, helping the housewife. When the fifth child was born, there was no more room for Mrs Frank in the overcrowded house, and again she had to move. Her last stay was at Murmerwoude (Friesland) where she lived in the very centre of the “Underground Resistance”. Mr and Mrs Sierke Schaafsma, her hosts, were genuinely relgious people.

According to Mrs Frank it was not only a nerve-racking, but also a most interesting and, historically speaking, important life they were leading: they hid people and incriminating material; held secret meetings etc.etc. She praises the courage and independent spirit of the average Dutch people. The province of Friesland was liberated by the Canadians on 12 April 1945. It took almost another month (5 May 1945) before the west of Holland was liberated, too. She describes the riots of joy, the cheers of the population, with which the Canadians were greeted.

This report is interesting because it shows the important role the Jewish resistance movement played during the German occupation of France and the many ways in which it was assisted by the French population. It is written by the above, who in 1933, as a child of 6, left Frankfurt am Main with her parents and her sister and emigrated to France.

As soon as Hitler invaded Northern France in 1940, the travels of the family started. They were among the thousands and thousands of refugees who crowded the roads to the south of France, stayed at different places which they had always to leave after a short while. Mr Guenzburg, the father, was several times interned, but either was released or succeeded to escape from the camp. In autumn 1943, when the Germans occupied the south of France, the Jewish resistance movement saw to it that all children found shelter. The Resistance was so well organized that it was able to follow up the fate of almost every child. Many of the children were taken, to convents and were thought by their surroundings to be Christians.

Mrs Unger and her sister were taken to a boarding School at Villeneuve sur Lot, where only the director, a Protestant knew their origin. In 1944 Mrs Unger and her father crossed the Spanish border in one of the small groups of 10 people, regularly organized by the resistance. With the help of the American Joint, they finally reached Israel. Mrs Guenzburg and her other daughter, who were staying in a home for aged people belonging to the “Heilsarmee” at Tonnein and would not have been able to endure the flight over the mountains, followed them a year later.

A report by the daughter of a Jewish diamond cutter in Amsterdam. She went underground in July, 1942, after she had been ordered to report for a transport to Westerbork. At first she stayed for short spells with various people, then a neighbour took her in for four months and a half, while her parents, who were later arrested and deported (on 31 January 1944), brought her food. But the position became too dangerous, and comrades of the socialist youth organisation, of which she had been a member, found her a place with a teacher's family in Winterwjk near the German frontier. There she remained until the end of the war. Her whole family with the exception of one brother of her father's, who had lived in France, perished.

An account in the first person of the author and her family’s experiences during the last year of war in Hungary. In March 1944, on arrival of German troops to occupy Hungary, the persecution of Jews intensified. Her husband was called up for forced labour and the author and her child, aged four, were left alone. In October 1944, when the Fascists (Arrow-Cross Movement) took over the government, the author made use of false papers (p.4), procured in the preceding February (p.1), and for some weeks lived as “Aryan” refugee. Later she and her husband procured Swedish Schutzpaesse's (p. 8) and lived with other Jews in the so-called Swedish Schutzhaus (p.8) until the Russians conquered this part of the city in January 1945. A vivid account of experiences, particularly of the period when the author lived an “illegal” life.

The authoress had to leave school prematurely in 1934 and became an apprentice in the tailoring trade. However, in 1937 she was, as a Jewess, not admitted to the final examination. Her parents then obtained visa for themselves and her for Cuba. Unfortunately, all the Cuban visas were cancelled, and the boat returned from Antwerp to Hamburg. The parents started to produce uniforms. Their 15 year-old daughter was the first to be transported East, the parents followed in February 1943 when they were taken to Auschwitz. These three perished.

The authoress then married the tailor Martin Deutschkron. She had to do compulsory work at Siemens in Berlin suburbs. When, at the end of January 1943, the Gestapo was about to arrest the couple, both decided to “disappear” and live illegally. Mrs Deutschkron nursed for six months a sick womanwhile Mr Deutschkron managed to obtain a job with a Hungarian as a tailor, he had to sleep on the ironing board. Later, Mrs Deutschkron worked there also. Mr Deutschkron possessed the military papers of a man who had died which bore all the necessary rubber stamps.

A Jew, named Ralf Isaaksohn, denounced the illegal occupation of the Deutschkron couple to the Gestapo. His girlfriend, Stella Kübler-Goldstein tried to trace them after they had left their jobs at the tailor Gomber. They first spent their nights in a shed in Borkheide, then in a house at Berlin Lützowplatz which was bombed. The same happened to a house in Grunewald where they for a time looked after the central heating.

For several months they were again able to do some tailoring and to barter textile articles for food. But there too they became suspect and had to move about constantly until in 1945 the Russians came and appointed Mr Deutschkron guardsman. When, however, for a short time the Germans returned, Mr Deutschkron was to be shot as a traitor. The couple, under renewed menace of death, escaped. Eventually, the Russians liberated them.

The authoress, née Lasocka, was the wife of the well-to-do manufacturer Paul Rosenfeld in Lodz (p.1-3, 12). He was arrested at the very beginning of the War, and she never saw him again. The Germans forced her to deliver to them all valuables she had deposited in a safe at her bank. Two days after the Germans had looted and ill-treated her mother, she died of her wounds (p.1).

A Jewish informer called Strassberg lured the authoress to Warsaw; making believe that he would help her husband, he got more and more money out of her (p.2-3).

The report describes life in the Ghetto (p.3-4). The helpful Christian maid (p.1, 3-5, 8, 11). Every morning, there were lying in the streets hundreds of bodies, either slain by the Germans or victims of the starvation. Escape (p.4).

Illegal life; everything was especially difficult and expensive because of the author's little daughter. An illegal group at the “Polish hotel” (Jewish agents among them) said to procure foreign documents for emigration. The price was enormous, about £1000 nonetheless she paid for her brother-in-law and his son but they were not heard of anymore (p.5).

Moving from one Polish family to the other, always paying highly for most unpleasant conditions, every moment in danger of being discovered. Arrested by police, escape after paying ransom twice (p.5-6).

The Polish riot, 1944 (p.8). The authoress with her child and her mother-in-law (who has been with her nearly all the time until her death in London) had to flee from the Germans. Non-Jews helping Jews: a railway-officer helped them to escape from the moving train near Ursus; another one put them up, his daughter and a girl in the street bore witness, in order to get a necessary document from a kindly clergyman (p.10). When finally every stranger had to leave, the authoress won the assistance of a high German officer (who did not recognise them to be Jews); he put a van and three Germans in uniform at her disposal to take them to a place near Lowicz, where her former maid was living. Because of this escort who insisted that the Mayor procured lodgings for them, too, they had to take to flight again, when the Russians approached. They went back to Lodz and their old flat.

In July 1946 they came to London after getting the necessary documents through an American relative who had learned from the radio, that they had survived. While they were waiting for the relative's arrival in London, the authoress became engaged to her present husband and decided to stay in England for good.

The author was interviewed by Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler in Berlin.

He reports on antisemitismin a Berlin school in 1933. Forced labour for boys under sixteen: sixty hours a week for about 25 Pfennig an hour. In order to avoid impending deportation to Poland, at the end of 1942 (p.1,4), he went to live with a “Mischling” (p.1-3), now his brother-in-law, who was already hiding his father and sister as well.

Non-Jews helping Jews, among them Dr. George Grosscurth, Robert Koch-Krankenhaus, who was later executed for his work with a Resistance Group, liquidated, in the Autumn 1943 (p.2,4). Frightened, the three illegal guests left their hiding place which was bombed out, soon afterwards. Bombenscheine (p.2, 4). The author's sister went with her fiancé into hiding at Vienna, the other two found a little room in Karow near Bernau (p.2-3) under false pretenses and through a forged document. Arrested by the Wehrmacht, the author and his father were taken to the Jewish Sammellager Schulstrasse; ill-treatment through Gestapo (p.3-5). Deportation via Auschwitz to Sachsenhausen (p.3). In February 1945, the author was separated from his father and never saw him again. Transports to Neubrandenburg, Ravensbruck, a small camp near Ludwigslust (p.3-4). Rote Kapelle resistance group (p.4). Volksdeutsche SS (p.3-4).