F. was only a schoolgirl when her family made an unsuccessful attempt at emigrating from Frankfurt to France and at settling in Paris. They returned to Berlin in 1935, whereupon the father was taken to Dachau and the mother to Moringen-Soling camp. The girl found a home with an aunt in Mecklenburg, and after 9 months she met her parents at the Czechoslovak frontier, sadly changed by the suffering in the camps. They reached Prague, and the Refugee Committee helped them until the father found employment in his profession as a chemist. N. became a pupil at the Rotter School, and after 2 years’ training obtained well-paid work as a commercial artist.

With the invasion of Czechoslovakia their life was shattered once again. While the synagogues in Prague were burning, the girl married Peter Lewin, a German lawyer. He had a brother in England, and they planned to go there via Poland and to cross the frontier illegally at Maehrisch Ostrau. Their parents preceded them and contacted a man who promised to take them across the frontier, but he turned out to be a Gestapo agent and delivered them into the hands of the Gestapo. The father was beaten until he revealed the whereabouts of the young couple, who were arrested at their hotel. N. spent 8 days in a tiny prison cell together with 27 other women under dreadful conditions. She was then taken to the state prison and reunited with her mother. Every day they were taken in a police van to a villa at the out-skirts of the town and interrogated. Unusually, a middle-aged SS-man, by the name of Schneider, fetched N., and this man was to become her saviour. One day he offered to walk with her to the villa and took her to a friend, where a good meal was waiting. He then told her to watch him in the mirror behind the typewriter in the office, and he would indicate by signs which questions to answer.

In the meantime, the women had discovered that their husbands were at the same prison and even managed to get in touch with them. When Schneider continued his clandestine friendliness, N. implored him to help them escape, but he would only promise to shift their index cards, so that they might be overlooked. However, one night he came to their cell and took them to a lorry, together with two other women, and N.’s father and the husbands of the women joined them. N.’s own husband was missing, something had gone wrong with his index card. Schneider took them to a cemetery outside the town which adjoined the frontier with Poland. He told them to walk straight ahead; on their left were swamps, on their right the Polish police and behind them, the Gestapo who would shoot them on sight. Later, N. heard that Schneider, having helped many more Jews, was shot.

N. and her parents reached Kattowitz and were sheltered by Polish Jews. The town was swarming with Gestapo spies, and there were raids every day. Meanwhile, N.’s husband had been tried at Troppau, discharged and joined his wife in K. On receipt of their English visas, the young couple went to England, via Danzig and Sweden. Their parents were supposed to follow, but they were caught. There was one last message from them from a camp in Kielce/Poland. After a difficult start in England, N.’s husband was interned on the Isle of Man. Later, he joined the Intelligence Service and perished in Luxembourg.

In the winter of 1940 the author - a Polish Christian - fled with her husband from the Russians to Wilno. Mr Zadarnowska who had been a forester on an estate near Lida (East Poland) became a labourer, while the author worked as stage designer at a theatre. Here she met a Jewish prompter, Masza Perewoska. After the German occupation of Wilno the Zadarnowska’s decided to return to their home, and Mrs Zadarnowska went to say farewell to the Perewoskas. She found the whole family in a state of upheaval, as the Germans had ordered all Jews to move into the ghetto. Nobody at the time knew of the subsequent mass murders in Ponary forest, but on her return home, the author felt compelled to save Masza and her daughter Lilka.

In November 1941 she returned to Wilno. Ill though she was, she faced the inclement weather and considerable danger to establish contact with Masza. Finally, she found a workman willing to take a message into the Ghetto, and the women met at the house of a mutual friend. Meanwhile the author sold Masza’s valuables in order to finance the purchase of forged papers, a certificate of baptism and travel permits. At one of the “selections” Masza and her family had been included for the transport to Ponary, and in a desperate effort to save her friend, the author prevailed upon Professor Kola Taranowski to give her shelter, so that she and her child did not have to return to the Ghetto. The next day Masza escaped to Lida.

Encouraged by this success, the author applied for her own travel paper, and at the psychological moment asked for the inclusion of “a child” and followed Masza to Lida. After days of frantic search and with the help of a parson, she located Masza and, in spite of the great dangers involved, travelled with her and the child to her home. Her husband soon agreed to keep mother and child. Dangerous, nerve-racking months followed during which the author tried to ward off the constant danger of detection by making Masza look more “Aryan”, and by teaching the child the Polish language and Christian prayers. In the following summer, frequent Russian partisans ambushes added to their anguish and finally forced the Zadarnowska’s to move to Lida.

They took Masza and Lilka with them, but a few weeks later somebody asked for Masza on the telephone by her proper name. Undeterred by the danger and the proximity of Gestapo headquarters, the author helped Masza and the child to flee to a farm, the commandant of the Polish Resistance having provided forged papers. A period of constant moves followed, and in the end, the author had to take them back, as nobody else was brave enough to shelter them. Later, Masza decided to volunteer for work in Germany (Konstanz). The Zadarnowska’s were forced by the constant Russian air attacks to move to Warsaw, where the couple got separated during the insurrection. Mrs Zadarnowska was taken to Breslau as a slave labourer; Mr Zadarnowska was sent to Dachau where he perished. Mrs Zadarnowska managed to flee to Konstanz and join Masza. Both had to work hard, and when, at the end of the war, Switzerland opened her frontiers, they went there.

Mrs Zadarnowska now works as a designer at the Polish museum in Rapperswi, - the Jewish family she saved live in Israel.