יום שבת, י״ט תמוז תשפ״וSaturday, July 4, 2026
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Then I started working. I worked for two years at the sales office of Max Factor Cosmetics. Benno started working at Neutra’s, and then we, little by little, became very integrated into American society. And we wanted to. We wanted to become Americanized.
You didn’t have to be rich to have a cleaning girl in the house, a live-in. You always had live-in help because there were so many of those peasant girls who would come and… We would have sometimes two in the house.
Suddenly in the minds of others you become somebody because you survived. You know everyone who died had stories up to the point of his death.
When we first came to Stuttgart, at the very beginning, June, July, August, we really didn't know what is going to happen. And then also, we were all terribly upset right away because of the policy of the world. You see, we knew – like we were saying – nobody's going to say thank you to us for surviving.
What would they do to the Nazi's they found working in a pharmacy? I don't know. I was supposed to report to them. The whole country was Nazis, what were they going to do with them all?
We waited another few days. Then came this order that all the slave laborers have to come to the camp. If somebody would be caught outside, he'd be put in – whatever they were threatening us with. So we did.
In the beginning, I think, you know, from the heat of the battle, they were all very rude, the Americans – I mean to the Germans. There came this Dr. Hauser, who was actually a very decent fellow, and this American officer who kept spitting all the time, just spitting as far away as he can. But later on they all behaved very well.
So they needed someone to work in this dining room. When we first came, we really had to clean it up. We had to wash all the windows and bring it into shape. Then again, I don't know.
They are trying to see me, to find out if I am a Pole from Miedzyrzec. If an authentic Pole, then they are afraid of me, I could denounce them as Jewish. If I am a Jewish girl from Miedzyrzec, who am I, they wondered.
We talk a little bit about the war, and about what's happening to the people, and how they are scattered, and about people being sent off to Germany, and how will the war end, and what do I think of this, and what do I think of that.
I can still see the German women… Some of them were so sadistic. They just walked around and just hit everybody right and left. Right in front of me a boy bent down – he was working, and he bent down for something, and she put a bullet through his head.
We are walking back and on the way we pass a house, and the policeman says to us, You know, in this house lives another Polish employee of the Arbeitsamt. If you are already out of the ghetto, why don't you try him, maybe he will do something.
Some were sent to labor camps, which were almost like concentration camps except that they got better food. I mean, they were not persecuted, they were not beaten, they were not starving, they were not shot like the Jews were.
Somebody hit me there with a… Blood started streaming down. Whoever was sitting behind me says, ‘Look, you are all bleeding.’ I said, ‘So what.'
And we go there, and here I come with this German. And we take the thing and go down and he takes me to the German officer's dining room. And there we come. We come in and he introduces me to some other people who are sitting. We sit down, and there again, the meal of my life – everything.
Things were really quite desperate at that time. People really thought that this was it. So then, my mother wasn't the only one that started especially since we were traveling, ‘Why don't you save yourself, go.’
This was it. And my father and two brothers were killed that night. My other two brothers, we never heard from them again either…
It was always like an adventure to a certain extent. But by the time you came, when you got off the train, then you were afraid.
You were not allowed to roam those villages anymore, but from time to time we would take the train which was absolutely punishable by death.
The all too familiar sequence throughout Jewish history with its devastating consequences once again ran its course.
July 3, 2026 
