Source: Yad Vashem Archive 0.2/29 (English in the original) With the kind permission of the Wiener Library, London. [Mrs. A. worked as a nurse in Berlin. After she was dismissed in 1933 from the hospital due to her non-Aryan origin, she began working in the Jewish hospital. Her husband left for England in 1939. She did not manage to follow him and was left in Berlin with her little daughter. Being half-Jewish, she was protected from deportation.]
…I asked Mrs. A often in the course of our conversation: what was the worst part of life in Berlin? She replies without hesitation: the perpetual fear of being transported. Mrs. A.'s daughter was the first Typhus patient in Berlin. She got the infection through Magermilch (low-fat milk). The Nazis took this without signs of panic and she received treatment in the Jewish Hospital as a matter of course. When Mrs. A's daughter was about four years old, she asked her mother to buy her some cherries. Fresh fruit was not obtainable on Jewish ration cards and the child, who saw them in a shop, asked first for a pound of cherries and then, when refused that by her mother, for at least one. Her mother explained that on Jewish cards one could not get even one. The little girl exclaimed: 'I'm fed up with all this. I shall go into a church and become "Aryan"'. It must be added that the shopkeeper heard all this and yet did not give the child one cherry! As the air raids on Berlin increased in number, the patients in the hospital were put in the cellar and nursed there. This was very terrible because of the darkness. Electricity was in short supply and for a certain number of hours per day the current was cut off. Mrs. A. said that during this period, she often risked her life trying to procure some candles… One day Mrs. A. was travelling on the tram wearing her nurse's uniform and the yellow star. Being very tired, she fell asleep and leaned on the shopping bag of a woman who moved it a little to make her more comfortable. A middle aged man started shouting at this woman, telling her not to trouble herself about a Judenschwein (Jewish swine) saying: 'what do you think these would do to us if things were to go wrong' (i.e. we lost the war) This in 1941. Mrs. A handed in her silver and most of her jewellery when asked to do so. She felt it could be traced to her too readily through the insurance societies. Some items, not insured, she asked her dressmaker to hold in safe keeping for her. After the war the dressmaker claimed that everything was destroyed by bombs. And so it might have been. Mrs. A's mother was sent to Theresienstadt and Mrs. A. watched the elderly woman leave and stood in the doorway trying to sort out her thoughts. She was approached by the Portierfrau (wife of the janitor) who had watched the transport and said: can I have your mother's two winter coats now that she does not need them any longer?' Mrs. A. has this to say in her defence: If she had not grabbed them immediately, the Gestapo would have had them the next day….
