…Very close to our building was the main building of the Stuermer, the notorious Nazi newspaper. I often had to pass this building on my way to some private lessons. Since I couldn't go to school, I had private lessons. Once, while I glanced at their windows, I could see the front page of the Stuermer , with a caricature of the Jews. I call it caricatures because they were. It was so bad and I saw them so often, that I later on almost felt that this must be what we are, that must be how we look, and it took me a long time to get rid of this image. Propaganda is a very terrible situation and very poisonous… Quite some time before Kristallnacht , all our friends disappeared, our Christian friends disappeared from us. We were really just a Jewish group now. I had no contact, hardly any contact with former girlfriends or other people I knew. I remained mostly in Jewish circles and also afterwards worked in the Jewish hospital, and then worked for a Jewish doctor. But nothing was permanent at this time because the people I worked for usually left the country eventually, those who could leave the country. Those who didn't, sometimes moved away. It was very difficult to immigrate into Israel since the White Paper [British policy restricting immigration to Palestine in 1939] unless you…married somebody who had an Israeli permit, then you were able to get out… My sister did not go back to school. She stayed at home and didn't want to go out because she had stones thrown at her. Ever since the Kristallnacht, which I call the overture to the extermination of the Jews,… things worsened from day to day and became almost unliveable. I became very friendly with one of the [Jewish studies] seminary students. We were under curfew, by the way. We could not go out at night. So in the evening he came over to my place or he had a little room where he studied and I went over to him and he started to make me Jewishly conscious. He taught me Hebrew…he taught me to be a Jew. He instilled in me a pride in being Jewish. He taught me various things and also the joy of Judaism…. He instilled in me a whole new thing, to really appreciate being a Jew, not just because a Nazi tells you that you are no good, that you are terrible. And this was the most important part, because this came at a time when I was mowed down. I had no feeling for myself. I actually ended up thinking that they were right, that I must look like … the caricatures in the Stuermer . I thought that was my image, thought we were no good, that we didn't contribute to anything, that we were inferior.
