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.

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).

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.

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.

Mrs Hirsch is the daughter of Christian parents. Her mother, Mrs Meyer, née Kerl, managed a large boarding-house in Teplitz, where Mrs Hirsch spent her youth until she married Egon Hirsch, a Jewish insurance agent for the “Viktoria“ company. The couple lived first in Bodenbach, then in Karlsbad.

When Hitler annexed the Sudetenland, they fled to Prague. When Prague was taken by the Germans Mrs Hirsch prepared for their emigration. She succeeded in getting an exit permit for Mr Hirsch which enabled him to go to England. She, as a Christian, was not allowed to leave the country, and her marriage was dissolved on Gestapo orders. With labour conscription in Czechoslovakia, she took various jobs where she could be helpful to Jews, or where she could sabotage the work of the Germans. She also sheltered a Jewish friend. With a doctor’s certificate that she was suffering from TB she managed to get time off for holidays in the mountains, but when she finally joined her mother in Teplitz, she had to attend a doctor who treated her alleged disease with painful injections.

After the end of the war, Russians occupied Teplitz, and for fear of Russian acts of violence, the women took German prisoners of war into their house, but the constant nervous strain and fear of deportation drove the mother to suicide.

In 1946 Mrs Hirsch could join her husband in England, and their marriage was legalised again. However, the 7 years of separation had estranged them, and after 3 years they got a divorce. After the usual type of work for refugees, Mrs Hirsch finally obtained work with the European service of the BBC. She lost all her possessions in Teplitz-Schönau.

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.

Original title: Those Twelve Years Of The Third Reich In Retrospect.

Recorded by: author

Original form and contents: Report of an Anti-Nazi university teacher on personal experiences and relations under the Nazi-régime and afterwards. The author’s opinions on political events, personalities and developments. The attitude of the UNDERGRADUATES at the various universities. Details on some items already mentioned in No.1092/I. Trouble prepared for the author’s seminary, in June 1940 (English History), prevented obviously by the NS Rektor SCHMITTHENNER (p.6,7,10-12). In 1940, the author passed his exam as military interpreter for English; in the Spring 1942, the Rektor declared, that he was no longer indispensable; with the help of his collegue PARET (p.9,11) he managed to get to the AFRICA-CORPS. At the staff of his -15th Tank- division were no SS, no Nazis, but many active officers who would freely utter their ANTI-NAZI convictions, though doggedly doing their duty. The reasons of ROMMEL’s success (p.ll). - Not fit for service in a tropical climate, the author was released, in Dec.1942. From 1943, the universities enjoyed a certain protection (p.7,8). The GIRL-UNDERGRADUATES, at KIEL fanatic adherents of LUDENDORFF, MATHILDE ( p.9), at HEIDELBERG, though most of them NS, very well- behaved. Fräulein Cornely, a MISCHLING I, could study and take her degree with the help of everybody concerned (professors, students etc in Summer 1944 (p.12). American troups embittered after a visit to BBRGEN-BELSEN (p.13). ROSENBERG, considered by a RUSSIAN as liberator (p.l4). Fraternization prohibited (p.14,15). - PENHAM, CIC-Agent, Heidelberg; mental. ANTISEMITISM of American officers. - INFORMERS (p.l6) ANTISEMITIG article in the author’s magazine “Die Welt als Geschichtë by KITTEL (P.17). - The idea of a “KOLLEKTIVSGHULD“ incomprehensible to the youth as well as to the many Germans who had been ANTI-NAZIS (p.15-17).

Some vague recollections of Theresienstadt by Gerda Siegel (born 1940), most probably the child of a half-Jewess married to a Jew, who was taken to Theresienstadt when she was three years old. She describes her life there, where she found a “K.Z. Omi” [Camp 'Granny'] who took care of her and hid the child for about a year in a cellar in order to protect her from one of the “transports” to Auschwitz.

Mrs Sternberg-Sitte is a Christian and emigrated to Amsterdam in 1933 with Mr Sternberg-Sitte, a Jewish lawyer from Berlin. The Nuremberg laws prohibited a legal marriage. At first the couple lived precariously, he as a taxi-driver, she as a dressmaker. Later, Mr Sternberg-Sitte had an agency for groceries. After the German invasion, Mr Sternberg-Sitte ostensibly left their flat and lived illegally as an “onderduiker”. In September 1942 they were denounced and arrested and taken to the Amsteveensche Weg prison. Mr Sternberg-Sitte was sent to Amersfort camp and later gassed in Auschwitz (p.2). Mrs Sternberg-Sitte remained in prison until 1943. Conditions there were tolerable, although the cells were badly overcrowded. She was then put on a transport of prisoners which stopped at the prisons of Scheveningen, Cleve, Utrecht, Düsseldorf, Hannover and Berlin, collecting prisoners of all types and nationalities, finally to end in Ravensbrück. There were approximately 50,000 prisoners in Ravensbrück, both political and criminal.

The account goes into the details of the appalling conditions there, describing the organisation in the various blocks (p.4), the insufficient food and clothing (p.5), the brutal treatment under the command of supervisor Binz ( p.5) and the atrocities and penalties for the least lapse (p.5-7). There were three brothels in the camp (p.7-8) whose inmates had preferential treatment, but if they became ill they were gassed. Pregnant women had to submit to abortions, and if a child was born, the prisoners killed it and considered this an act of humanity. Of two smaller camps nearby, one was turned into an extermination camp, and of the 4,000 women sent there only 30 survived (p.8).

The women were allocated to various “commandos“ and Mrs Sternberg-Sitte got into the group working for Siemens. This entailed various privileges e.g. an extra ration of bread - “Siemensbrot”- and housing in special blocks (p.7). In March 1945 Siemens no longer had work for the prisoners, and they returned to the general camp. In April 1945 the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg prisoners had to report to the “Volkssturm”, the SS having disappeared, and were told by some Swedes arriving at the camp that they were free. When lorries arrived to fetch them, they took other prisoners as well, and Mrs Sternberg-Sitte was one of them. They were first taken to the International Red Cross centre in Lübeck and from there on a hazardous journey (p.10) with frequent air attacks and breakdowns via Bremen, Kiel and Hamburg to Flensburg, and after a short stop at the Danish frontier town of Padborg they went to Malmö in Sweden. From here Mrs Sternberg-Sitte was later repatriated to Holland.

Mrs Ehrenberg lived with her first husband, an engineer holding a French diploma, Schlama Goldstein, and their little daughter (born 1938) in comfortable circumstances at Lodz, Poland (p.1, 10, 11, 13). Together with innumerable others, they fled from the approaching Germans in September 1933. The situation on the main road proved to be chaotic; she went back to Lodz through burning villages, under the fire of German planes shooting recklessly down at the fleeing people (p.1). Terror at Rawa-Mazowiezka; hostages (p.2); a pastor (Volksdeutscher) ordered the murdering to be stopped. After the occupation of Warsaw, the author's husband and brother returned to Lodz, too, but as the oppression was getting worse, fled to Bialystok (p.3-9), a Polish town, belonging to Russia at the time. When, in February 1940, the author's family had to move into the Ghetto Lodz she pretended to be a Polish Aryan and tried to join her husband with her little child (who soon died there) at Bialystok, occupied by the German troops since June 1941. Although she enjoyed the help of several people, the dangers of her illegal life finally proved too much for her nerves, and she went to live in the Ghetto, in August 1943. Dreams coming true (p.5-6, 9-10, 12). In view of the pending liquidation, her husband insisted that she left the Ghetto, and she used her Aryan document to get released; as she was leaving, the SS-officer who was guilty of the murder and [illegible]JÄ misery of innumerable human beings, gave her a kitten to save its life (p.6).

She then made several - interesting - attempts to rescue her husband (p.7), but could not save him from the worst. At last she was denounced by an informer, Czeslaw Bielilo (p.7, 13) and imprisoned at Bialystok, as, since November 1943, Jews who had escaped from the Ghetto were no longer shot dead on the spot, where they were discovered, but had to be taken to an annihilation camp.

Horrible transport to KZ Stutthof near Danzig. Selected and sent to Auschwitz (p.9-11). There she was an eye-witness of all kind of horrors and atrocities. With the aid of a Polish detainee, she would succeed to hide and rescue Jewish girls from the selections (p.11).

In October 1944, transfer to Bergen-Belsen (p.12-13). Typhoid. She would see Irma Gresse repeatedly but never saw her ill-treating a detainee (p.12). Liberation, on 15 April 1945. Visit to Lodz; of her large family only one aunt had survived.

At Konstanz, Bodensee (p.13), she made the acquaintance of Mr Hajim Ehrenberg, a survivor of Treblinka, whose wife and children had perished. She got married to him, in December 1946, and with the help of the Joint, they emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1949, where they are both working successfully, after a son was born to them, in 1950. (p.13,14).

In order to protect her younger daughter, the author took the advice of a friend of hers and approached a branch of the German ‘Arisierungs Kommission’, Den Haag (Dir. Dr. C Allmeyer) with the help of a Dutch solicitor. She declared that her daughter was the illegitimate child of an ‘Ayran‘ since living in America. The solicitor succeeded to get the young girl registered and by chance also her mother, and all of them (including the husband) got stamps certifying that they were excempt from the ‘Arbeitsdienst’. A year later, the young lady underwent a racial-biological examination at the university, where everybody proved eager to be helpful.

As conditions grew more and more difficult, the parents preferred to go into hiding, and their daughter had to pass another racial examination undertaken officially by a German professor of biology from Kiel who came to the Hague for that purpose twice a year. She was told he would charge fIs. 600 for her certificate, but would be satisfied to get a hundred. And for fIs.100 she became a Mischling Grade 1 and was saved from the yellow star and all difficulties and dangers.