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.

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.

Report by a Jewish woman who with her small child lived illegally in Germany from 27 February 1943, the day of mass arrests of Jews in Berlin.

At first, she, her husband and her child lived underground in Berlin with the aid of non-Jewish friends. In February 1944 she succeeded in obtaining false papers and moved with her child to Lippinck in Western Prussia (Polish Corridor), where she gained the trust of Nazi Party and Security Police members. She had contact with Polish Partisans of the “Tuchler Heide” and was able to inform them about the Security Police plans for partisan warfare. Once she cooperated in helping escaped British Prisoners of war. In February 1945 she succeeded in returning to Berlin, where her husband had lived illegally all the time. He narrowly escaped being shot as a deserter.

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.

Miss X. was living with her Aryan mother and Nazi stepfather in Breslau; had, on the whole, no unpleasant personal experiences. School (1941 last year of Abiturium for “Non-Aryans”). “Pflichtjahr” (instead of six months' Labour Service). Ration cards had to be fetched from a special centre for every household with a non-Aryan, which was compromising. She had to leave a position as a shop assistant in a music shop because it would bring her into contact with the general public.

In forced labour camp: Organisation Todt; Unternehmen Berthold; unpleasant circumstances; the author states cynical outlook on sexual behavior. She had a chance of marrying an Aryan Czech, i.e. “a man of inferior nationality” since her father had not received a University education; thus there was deemed to be little risk of her transmitting “Jewish intelligence” to her children.

Miss X. is now living in London with her Jewish father.

Correspondence between various offices of the Nazi Party and the Bund Deutscher Maedchen in Cologne about whether the children of a half-Jewish woman and an Aryan (“Deutsch-bluetigen”) are members of the BDM. The Gauleitung Cologne demands that the “quarter-Jews” are to be expelled from the BDM. In conclusion, the Rassenpolitische Amt of the NSDAP Cologne states that the Mischlinge concerned are not registered as members of the Hitler Youth or BDM.

Unfortunately the reports mention the names of neither persons nor places.

Record of an interview with Mr Singer, a Polish citizen resident in Duisburg, Germany, Jewish, who emigrated illegally to Holland in December 1938. His Aryan wife and his small daughter followed him in 1939. Mr. Singer was interned at Hook van Holland, his wife and child remained free until April 1940, when all three were sent to Westerbork, then still under Dutch administration. When the Germans took over the camp on 13 July 1942, Mischlinge and partners of mixed marriages were released, and the Singers returned to Amsterdam. The rest of the report describes the hardships of life in Holland under German occupation.

The document reads like a poetic short-story. During a walk along the river in the Berlin of 1945, the writer first saw Mr Bender and his wife on board of their barge and noticed a little dog playing at their feet. Something about the sudden outcry of the woman and the tender care of the old man aroused her interest, and after they had met several times along the river, they got into a conversation in the course of which Mr Bender told his sad story. He was the son of a small Jewish trademan and became a musician. He married Franziska, the Christian daughter of a bargee. They had a son, Philipp, who married a Jewess. With their granddaughter, their happiness was complete. When the child was 12 years old, they gave her a little dog. That was the time of the first anti-Jewish hostilities. When the situation worsened, and Jews were eliminated from the economy, the daughter-in-law became shy and misanthropic, and the child grew very attached to her grandmother. The old woman, therefore, never recovered from the shock to find the girl and her Jewish mother taken away, when they returned home one day in 1943. In spite of innumerable petitions, they never heard from them again. From that day on, the old woman is haunted, and when she cannot find rest at nights and walks about, “the little dog barks”.

The daughter of a Jewish dental surgeon and his Christian wife reports on her experiences as a child in Berlin, during the time of the Nazi persecution.

Born in 1927, she attended a common primary school until the Kristallnacht, in November 1938. After ½ year in a Jewish school in 1939, she went to a Mischlings school which later was prohibited; she could then attend a special form at another Jewish school but was excused most of the time, as she had to help her parents in the surgery as well as in the household. A renewed application for 'Arisierung' was turned down, in 1940, and she had to leave school for good.

The Jewish Labour Exchange, Fontanestrasse (p.2) sent her to work at Martin Michalski, a workshop for uniforms, where she was paid RM 0, 30 per hour at 15 and RM 0,35 at 16 and 17. No bad treatment, but for occasionally rather risky errands (p.2-4). Extremely exciting summons; Kommissar Wenzel (p.4-8).

Here, the recorder has inserted a short report on the interviewee's mother (p.7-8). On 3 February 1945, the family's home was completely bombed out. After the War, the young girl attended a commercial course and later became employed at an office of the Jewish community in Berlin. In September 1948, she left the Evangelical Community and, in 1949, rejoined the Jewish Community (p.9).

The author, a Jewish dermatologist, has been living with his Christian wife in East Berlin for about 25 years. He had served in the First World War for a short time, after his brother had been killed in action. From April 1933, he was no longer qualified to work for the National Health Insurance (p.1) and had to move out of his flat. In the year 1938 he became “Judenbehandler“, i.e. he got permission to attend [illegible] Jews. His sister was deported and never heard of again, his mother fell ill of persecution mania and finally died of hunger in Theresienstadt (p.2); the beautiful furniture at her flat was stolen by an official who had been sent there on duty (p.6).

When the Gestapo turned up to arrest the author, he could hide in time. The men asked for his six year old son to take him instead of his father, but he was at school. Several times, the doctor had a narrow escape; at such an occasion, SS-men who were looking for deserters and Jews murdered fourteen Jews (p.3-4).

At a collection of arms, an officer pocketed the pistol Mrs. H. was delivering to the Police (p.5). Another time, she was summoned to the Police-Station and urged to divorce her husband; she refused in a wise and determined way (p.6).

Some Christian patients: Herr Frank, a decent man, though a member of the NSDAP (p.6-7); another patient became an antisemite after he had prospered through the situation; a well-off factory-owner who would pay most generously for the smallest advice (p.7).

Death of a lame old spinster who had served her Führer fanatically (p.7-8). The house in which the old maid voluntarily perished burnt down, and the doctor who had lived there, too, with his family, lost all their belongings. After the War, they started a new life and the doctor is still busy.