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 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.

Mrs Kahle, an 'Aryan' German, wife of Prof. Kahle, formerly orientalist at Bonn University (see P.III.f. No. 703) describes briefly her and her family’s life up to 1933. She and her husband were from the very beginning decidedly against the Nazi regime. The boycott (1 April 1933) she calls the “Schand-tag des Deutschen Volkes”. They never allowed her sons to enter the Hitler Youth and when her youngest boy, who was then 10 years old, at Easter 1937, was compelled by law to join, she succeeded in getting him out of it with a doctor‘s certificate. In 1938 both her other sons had to do “Arbeitsdienst”. She felt it her duty to visit them every Sunday and in this way to counter-act the effect of the Nazi ideology on young people. She tells of the impossible timetable in the camp and the insufficient hygienic conditions. Many of the youths became severely ill.

On 10 November 1938 one of her sons went to a few Jewish shops in order to help the owners to save valuables which he took home; Mrs Kahle and her husband gave hospitality to a Jewish colleague of his and his wife. On 11 November all the Kahle sons were eagerly engaged in helping Jews to get their shops in order. Mrs Kahle could not expose herself in the same way, because of her husband’s position, but she visited Jewish people. This became known & an article was published in the Westdeutscher Beobachter (17 November 1938 edition) under the heading: 'Dies ist Verrat am Volke Mrs Kahle & her sons are helping the Jewess Goldstein with the “Aufraeumungsarbeiten”'. It was the preliminary to Prof. Kahle’s dismissal, Her eldest son was sentenced by a disciplinary court (copy of the sentence is added to this report); Prof. Kahle was forbidden by the Gestapo to speak to his colleagues any more. The attitude of the family caused a kind of tumult among the inhabitants of Bonn and their position became threatening. Finally, they succeeded, under almost insurmountable difficulties, to emigrate to England in April 1939.

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.

The outstanding impression of the account, written in the first person, is the deep religious faith of the writer. Rather than a record of facts, it is a praise of the Lord for her salvation, both physical and spiritual, and an explanation of her eventual conversion to the Christian Faith.

The author was born in Berlin, the daughter of Orthodox Dutch Jews. When the Nazi regime started, the family moved to Amsterdam, but the happy atmosphere of their home was never recaptured there. After the German invasion and with the gradual elimination of the Jews from the economic and cultural life, the Dobschiner's moved to the Jewish part of Amsterdam, and an uncle and two cousins lived with them.

In February 1941 German armed soldiers raided the town, demanding 4,000 Jews, and author's two brothers were taken away and murdered. Her parents, already weighed down by fear and expropriation of their property, broke down completely. The author's relation to them became strained, particularly as her father insisted on her training as a tailoress, whereas she longed to become a nurse. She finally yielded to this urge and looked after the many Jewish orphaned children. In December 1942 author contracted scarlet fever and during her illness felt that life held a message from God. The raids had already taken her uncle and the cousins, when in April 1943 her parents were arrested. The author was allowed to see them twice at the collecting centre and later she witnessed their deportation from the Children's Home, where she then worked.

Some time later the Children's Home was raided, the 150 children and staff deported. Shortly before, the author had been placed with a Jewish family, but they, too, were arrested and taken to the Amstelstation. The author, quite apathetic to her own fate, offered to take charge of the children, and later, when they were herded into a goods train, she discovered spots on a child and diagnosed a contagious disease. The Gestapo let her take the child to Dr. van Emden-Boas who, impressed by her courage, made her his nurse. She worked at the station and at a hospital until July 1943, when patients and nurses were deported. The author was already on the train, guarded by armed soldiers, but the same night she was back at the hospital “God delivered me!”.

When the hospital was raided again in August 1943, the author happened to nurse at a private house. For some time she then worked at the Joodse Invalide, the Jewish home for the aged. In the end, underground life was the only escape from deportation. With the help of the porter at the Home, the author contacted an unknown lady in whose flat she met Uncle Bas. On 3 September 1943, he took her on a hazardous journey to his home in Nieuw Beerta. With five other young people in hiding, the author lived with the Rev. Ader and his wife for 13 months. Several books have been written about this heroic man and the life in his manse. When danger approached, he found new underground places for his protegees.

The author lived in more than 27 different houses during the last span of this period. While in Uncle Bas' house, she came across the Children's New Testament and sometimes listened, hidden behind a door, to his services. He never tried to convert her, but she became more and more impressed with the teachings of Christ. South Holland was liberated by the Americans in September 1944, and in November she was baptized. She had never been able to discuss her intention with Uncle Bas. He and his wife were finally tracked down by the Gestapo. He was offered their freedom at the price of the name of ten of his protegees. As he would not speak, he was shot on 20 November 1944.