Report on my illegal life under the Nazis in Germany

by Ursula Finke, Berlin-Lichtenberg

I was born on 30.6.1923 in Berlin as a full Jew, daughter of the businessman Julius Finke and his wife Ella, nee Kallmann. After spending the first ten years of my life growing up without a care in the world, the year 1933 arrived and Hitler came to power.

There was a polling station in the building in which we were living, and unfortunately on polling day in 1933 I was playing near the window in one of our rooms with some quark. I was cooking like children used to do. How it came about that I let a few drops of this stuff drip out of the window, I still cannot explain to this day, however that is what happened, and just a few minutes later there was a ring on our doorbell. My father opened the door and there in front of him stood a Storm Trooper, who immediately rushed into the apartment right across the room to the open window, whistled down below and asked: Was it here? to which the answer came that it was. At this point I should mention that a Storm Trooper with an advertising poster had been standing outside the door of the polling station all day. The fellow in our apartment then said to my father that 15 drops of corrosive acid had been poured out of the window, and from that time on he blackmailed my father by threatening to send him straight to a concentration camp. Six months later we moved to Halensee to be rid of the fellow.

At Easter 1933 I was due to move to the Victoria-Oberlyceum, after having spent four years at the elementary school. As we did not know at first whether Jewish children were still allowed to go to the senior schools, I spent a month of the new school year still in the elementary school, after which I went to the Margareten-Lyzeum in Iffland Strasse. Here there were approximately 14 of us Jewish girls. The atmosphere under the class teacher, Herr Kochanowsky the senior primary school teacher, was so poor, that in October I begged my parents to send me to a Jewish school, which is what they did. As a result I then started going to the Jewish Community Middle School at 27, Grosse Hamburger Strasse.

In the meantime, my father had lost his job as company secretary of a department store, as the Jewish proprietor gave up the business. So, like many Jews, my father was unemployed, and it was very difficult to find work. He then did various temporary jobs and agency work; when that was no longer available either, he worked on a voluntary basis for the Jewish Community, until in 1937 he got a permanent job as a tax consultant for those wanting to emigrate. As everyone was thinking about emigrating, my parents took me out of school early, in October 1937, so that I, like my brother Hans who was born in 1920, and who was already training as an electrical engineer, could learn a trade. As I was quite skilful,

my parents sent me to train in a fashion house, where I began to learn dressmaking. The head of the fashion house was also a Jewish lady, and so in January 1939, like all German Jewish trades people she had to close the business. I then went to a fashion school and learned cutting. By the time this course had finished, Jewish girls were only permitted to go into service, and so I was forced to take a job doing housework in a Jewish guesthouse.

In the meantime, we had been given notice to quit our home following Kristallnacht in 1938. Our neighbours were party members and had told the landlord that they could no longer live under the same roof as Jews. My mother once went to speak to our neighbour and asked her what she had against us, whereupon the neighbour replied that she had nothing against us herself, but the Führer had had bad experiences with Jews!

Until 1st January 1940 I had the great good fortune to have had a place arranged for me through a friend in a fashion house, which a Jewish Polish lady was allowed to continue to run; she registered me as employed to do housework, although I did do sewing after all, so that in my job I was able to complete the part of my apprenticeship that I had not yet finished. Unfortunately, this lady was deported on the first Jewish transport in 1941. In addition, from that time onwards, Jews were only allowed to work in Jewish units into which they had been conscripted, therefore no longer in private employment.

In May 1939 the Jewish Community allocated us an apartment with two rooms in a so-called Jewish house- in a tenement with a W.C. on the stairs. We were just pleased not to have to share with other people, which with 4 of us going out to work would have been particularly difficult.

On 19th September 1941 the law was passed which stated that every Jew was obliged to wear a Yellow Star of David. Then Jews were no longer allowed to use public transport or visit places of cultural interest etc. Typewriters, radios, all electrical equipment, even irons, had to be surrendered, as well as jewellery etc. This latter had already taken place after Kristallnacht.

After I lost my job with the Jewish Polish lady, where in addition to me a certain Ruth Jacobson, a Turkish Jew, worked with whom I had become very friendly, I was given compulsory work at Moeller, a firm manufacturing ready–to-wear children’s coats in Schützen Strasse. In this Jewish unit about 30-50 Jewish men and women worked (today I can no longer say exactly how many). It was piecework, and about 3.75 marks were paid for a completed child’s coat. The deportations were still going on and so the time came when nearly every day one colleague or another was missing and did not come back. By now it was February 1943.

In the meantime, my father, like my mother, had been given compulsory work in a factory. They earned extremely little; food, which we had to buy on the

black market, was so expensive, that we could barely afford it. With ration cards we got neither meat nor butter, nor fish nor white bread. Several of the shopkeepers gave my mother something from time to time, in return for which she gave them clothing or other things from the household to show her gratitude. We had had to get rid of most of our furnishings when we moved from Halensee into the one and a half room apartment in 1939.

As deportation was a daily threat for us too, we trembled at each heavy footstep on the stairs, my friend Ruth Jacobson and her parents put pressure on me to start living illegally and, because as Turks the Jewish Laws did not apply to them at present, to move in with them. As a result of the constant pressure, with my nerves in a complete state of collapse as separation from my parents seemed to me almost impossible, on 25 February 1943 I pulled myself together and I moved to the Jacobsons who were also illegally sheltering a girl friend of their son as well as me, because I knew that I could still be separated from my parents by deportation and I did not want to fall into the hands of the Gestapo. On 27th February, a Sunday, the so-called Fabrik-Aktion by the Gestapo took place, during which every Jew was taken out of the factories, loaded onto lorries and taken to Auschwitz. My parents were among them. My brother, who had just had his appendix out in the Jewish Hospital, was also deported to Auschwitz two weeks later. As a qualified electrical engineer he was segregated with different workmates, who had all already been doing compulsory work together at Siemens in Berlin, and they had to put electrical installations in the villas of the SS officials there and maintain the power lines etc under the worst possible conditions. When the Russians approached Auschwitz, they were moved away. For ten days my brother lived off melted snow in a goods train with 80 people in one wagon, dressed only in his drill suit; he then came via Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg to Belsen, where, half-dead, he was then released and, praise God, survived.

Some days after the Fabrik-Aktion a colleague of my mother’s, who was in a mixed marriage and knew that I was with the Jacobsons, brought a card which my mother had thrown from a goods wagon travelling through Upper Silesia in the direction of Auschwitz, on which she had written a few lines. A lady had found the card in the open countryside and had put it in an envelope and added a few lines to say that the card had been thrown from a train in this way and had undersigned it with the words: A woman, who still thinks like a human being. No further indications of life came from either my mother or my father.

Unfortunately, my friend Ruth’s aunt, who had also been living illegally and had been recognised and arrested by an informer (a certain lawyer Jacob), had had the Jacobsons’ address on her, and so the Gestapo correctly assumed that illegals were to be found there. One day – it must have been in July 1943 - they burst into the Jacobsons’ home, the cleaner was wiping the front door to the apartment, and found not only me but also the girlfriend of Ori Jacobson, a certain

Sonja Weissbrot. This latter passed herself off as the daughter of a neighbour (Christin, who knew about us), and she managed to escape from the Gestapo because the neighbour stated that she was her daughter. It was Kommissar Wenzel and among others, Behrend the informer, who then dealt with me. The Jacobsons had been able to buy food ration cards on the quiet. Thanks to an acquaintance who had only one Jewish and three Christian grandparents – so did not come under the Jewish laws – I still had these with me in her name, to use as possible identification at an identity check, as I had no other identity papers. As it was necessary I now showed these cards and said I was the acquaintance. At first they wanted to take me with them to Grosse Hamburger Strasse, the Gestapo assembly point at that time, but it seems Behrend the informer took a fancy to me, and he asked me whether I would meet him, to which I naturally said I would and that I could then bring my identity card with me and, oh what a miracle, they did not take me with them, but ordered me to go a few days later to Grosse Hamburger Strasse, with my identity card naturally.

I told the girl first of all what had happened, and we arranged that, should she be approached by someone from the Gestapo, she would deny all knowledge of any of this and also of me, and as in any case I now wanted to try to ensure that the Gestapo did not approach her at all, I had no choice but to go to the rendezvous with the informer. Herr Jacobson, without the knowledge of Behrend the informer, was behind us all the time, in order to be able to help me if necessary. We met as arranged in the Alexanderplatz railway station, and I was sure of only one thing, that I had to make certain at all costs that the fellow vouched for me in Grosse Hamburger Strasse, that is, told them that he had seen the identity card and that it was therefore not necessary for me to appear there. The fellow kept on and on at me and told me that his wife was away so that it was quite safe to go to his apartment at 27 Weissenburger Strasse on the following Sunday. I said that I would go, on condition that I did not need to go to Grosse Hamburger Strasse, and as he seemed to be very keen on me, he agreed and we said goodbye. The lass was not bothered by the Gestapo on my account, thank God, even if nothing would have happened to her as she did not know anything (allegedly), but of course it was much better for her this way. I wrote a letter to the informer saying that I would not come on Sunday as arranged, but in the meantime he had already vouched for me.

To my great misfortune however, some days later this girl was ordered to go to the Gestapo because of another Jewish boy living illegally who had her address with him, and there it was established that I had not been The Right One on the previous occasion, and this made it obvious that I therefore must also be an illegal, and Behrend the informer, who had been very angry that I had stood him up that time, became even angrier still that I had got away from him.

In the meantime, I now had to disappear immediately from the Jacobson family. The Jacobsons had a longstanding acquaintance, who I had met at birthday celebrations etc, and who in the meantime was also living illegally with the Däne family and visited the Jacobsons from time to time. Lola Alexander, as she was called, left her clothes with my friend Ruth and me for mending, as we also used to do sewing together when I was staying there illegally. Frau Däne asked Lola Alexander one day where she had her mending done, and whether we would do any for her, which of course we were pleased to do. This is how Frau Däne came to the Jacobsons, heard about me and saw me and said to Lola Alexander, before I had even started thinking about leaving the Jacobsons, that she would take me in straight away too, even though apart from Lola, another Jewish girl was also housed at the Dänes. The question as to where I should go was now becoming urgent, and we got in touch with Lola and asked whether the Dänes would now stand by their word and take me in. And in fact unbelievably they did take me in as well, even though I was the third one. The Däne lived in a detached house in Conradshöhe, a villa suburb of Berlin, in Frau Däne's parents’ house; they were also in agreement with this.

The Däne owned three lending libraries. Lola Alexander worked in one of them and the Dänes asked me whether I would like to be employed in the second one, and I said I would. Lola’s shop was at the station on Frankfurter (now Stalin) Allee. The shop in which I worked was in Moabit, an area in which I was not known. As the bombing was becoming increasingly heavy, many people were spending the night in the suburbs to escape the dangers; it certainly was not the case that we used to go back to Conradshöhe each day. In the suburbs we said that we lived in the city and were registered there and spent the night in the suburbs because of the air raids, and in the city we said that we lived in the suburbs, so that no one would become suspicious.

The Däne had left me a library card and a work book which had belonged to a former Christian employee, who was still registered with them. (This employee, who had a child, was quite happy about this, as otherwise she would have been given compulsory work elsewhere, and in this way she was still regarded as being employed).

So, in August 1943 I came to the Däne. Lola Alexander and Frau Däne trained me and, as I had read a lot in any case, working in the library presented me with few difficulties and much pleasure. People were happy to be served by me, I reserved good books for them, and if I went shopping with the Däne family’s food ration cards, I managed to get more of everything that was on all the cards, and even here and there something extra, so that I could also contribute something to the household budget. Herr Däne had also made a lot of contacts so that I did not have to go hungry.

Except for the constant persecution mania from which I suffered, the year passed quite well in this way until 8th August 1944. After closing the shop

I would always meet Lola Alexander at the Gesundbrunnen station to go together with her on the only tram, number 28 or 128, which went from there to Conradshöhe, to the Däne. We always met at the circle line barrier. At this time of day there was always a terrible crush. Among hundreds of people, no one could go forwards or backwards, on this particular day someone grabbed my arm – Behrend the informer. I froze. He led me up the stairs, past Lola who was also frozen to the spot, but who he did not know, thank God. As I had the food ration cards with the Dänes' names with me in my handbag, I tried to throw these away so that Lola could pick them up, but Behrend only said, Pick them up! He pushed me along the passage there, gripping my arm the whole time. I begged him to let me go, as he had nothing to gain from seizing me, but he only answered with an icy, No! Platforms for trains in all different directions lead off the passage I mentioned. He pulled me onto the last platform, where he met a man, who I later learned was a certain Kommissar Tietze. As he had no idea who was coming with Behrend, this latter was obliged to tell him about me. He therefore let me go for a moment and said, If you carry on making a fuss, I’ll slap you so hard that you’ll fly into the wall! Full of despair, I took stock of my life and knew, that they would first beat me half to death and then pack me off to Auschwitz. As I had sworn to myself not to let these dogs kill me, and as well was feverishly working out how I could destroy the Dänes' food ration cards, the approaching S-Bahn train appeared to be my salvation, and with one jump I threw myself under the train.

I regained consciousness when someone called, Turn off the current. Lying under the train I heard an excited crowd on the platform who probably assumed I had acted out of lovesickness and who were now grumbling that I fully deserved a good hiding etc. I was almost out of my mind, felt no pain, just despair at still being alive and cried out, You should try being persecuted like a Jew sometime!

In the meantime, two rail workers came along and pulled me out from between two coaches, together with my bag which was unscathed. Behrend was feeling rather uncomfortable and he said to me, But we are good people, we would have let you get away, whereupon I replied, still unaware of the injury to my foot, Well, then let me get away! At this Behrend just smirked at me and said, You certainly can’t do that now! I was carried to the waiting room on the platform, a young soldier was nearby. I felt no pain, my ankle joint had been completely smashed, my foot was only a shapeless mass. My brain was feverishly trying to work out how to get rid of the bag, and with it the Dänes' address. Very quietly, I asked the soldier to take the bag but he was not brave enough,

as he knew that something was not right. Behrend called an ambulance from the Jewish Hospital in Iranische Strasse, which at this time had been turned into the Gestapo assembly camp

instead of Grosse Hamburger Strasse, into which I was carried on a stretcher. Behrend sat next to the stretcher on the journey to Iranische Strasse. I now got the food ration cards out of my bag and with Behrend watching not daring to take them away from me, tore them up into the tiniest pieces I could, so that it would be impossible to put them together again and scattered the pieces in the ambulance, as the window was shut so I could not throw them out.

The Jewish medical staff who were interned there and looked after the prisoners were waiting at the entrance to the hospital. Not until then did I lose consciousness and only came to again during the night. In the meantime, the doctors had performed an operation on my foot and put a two-part plaster cast from my knee to my upper thigh, as my foot had to be bandaged on a daily basis. It was thoroughly decaying. I had gangrene and osteomyelitis and Dr Lustig, who was treating me along with Herr Dr Helischkowski and Dr Cohen, bathed the foot each day, removed loose bone splinters and took the greatest possible pains to help me. I lay for 4 months with a temperature of 40°, lost 40 lbs and only after the third blood transfusion did the fever then slowly subside. Usually they would have amputated my foot, however I would then usually have been deported to Auschwitz soon after the amputation. Herr Dr Lustig knew this, and as he had sympathy for me, he tried to save me and he managed to do it as well, by getting a member of the Gestapo, Moeller (this latter was the second highest authority after Heydrich, so I was told), interested in my case. Moeller had studied medicine for several semesters and Dr Lustig turned me into a case study. My life was worthless in any case, so it would not have been so bad, if my foot had cost me my life. So to satisfy the interest of Herr Moeller I was and remained under arrest behind barbed wire in Iranische Strasse, confined to bed, my foot up in a sling for months, in the most terrible pain. At night the supervisory staff would come through the ward, shine a light into the beds to see if anyone was still there, and people were constantly being deported, even on stretchers, so that I had screaming fits for fear of also being transported in this condition. In addition, I was the only full Jew who stayed there under arrest for such a long time.

Then came the terrible air raids and, after the first four months when I began slowly to start eating again, terrible hunger. Each morning two dry slices of bread with jam, each evening the same and at midday soup made from water used to boil swede or kohlrabi, so that I was already sick just at the smell of it.

During the air raids we were taken to the cellar. At times I got yet another high fever, then the plaster splints would be scaled down and the Jewish nurse would lift me into a wicker chair in which I was hardly able to sit, I had lost so much weight and had become so weak.

In the hospital there were also so-called free patients, that is, those of mixed race, who were still protected by that part of their parentage that was Christian.

where they lived.

In this way April 1945 arrived. The air raids came so frequently, that with several other patients I had to spend weeks in the dark hospital cellar in a wheelchair. It was impossible to move in the wheelchair and everything had to be done in it, in the dark without help from the nurse. When the bombing and the fighting began in Berlin, I contracted erysipelas and my temperature went up to 40°, but at least they managed to set up a bed for me in the cellar, in which I lay until liberation on 8th May 1945. I was a skeleton, weighed 62 lbs, or 31 kilos. One day during the bombing it was so bad that everyone in the part of the cellar where I was lying ran away into another part of the cellar, and I remained there all alone, confined to bed, unable to move. Luckily nothing happened to me there, but the feeling of helplessness is indescribable. Foreign Jews, among others Russian Jews, had also been interned there in the hospital; Herr Dr Lustig went with a certain Herr Gordon to the Russian Kommandant there and made it clear to him who we were and asked for protection and help. The Russians said that anyone who knew how the Germans had lived in Russia would not be able to believe that there was single Jew still alive in Germany. However Herr Dr Lustig convinced them of this, and we got shelter and help as well as food. Only on 30th June 1945 was I able to leave the hospital, still today have to receive frequent medical treatment, as my foot started to knit together only very slowly and opens up now and then and sometimes discharges bone fragments. My mental state has also suffered badly. Despite this, with a lot of effort, I passed my master craftsman’s diploma as a dressmaker and am now independent, and I work as much as my strength allows. It is possible for me, with the use of elaborate orthopaedic shoes, with some effort, despite having no heel, just walking on the bone, and with diminished mobility in my ankle joint, in some measure to walk by myself.

I enclose a photocopy of the permit for my release from custody dated 29th April 1945. The gentlemen of the Gestapo probably thought that in this way, by releasing us from custody shortly before the Red Army marched in, they would buy their freedom or at least mitigate the just punishment that was waiting for them. (All detainees received this permit at that time, and those who were in a position to leave the building of course did so; I myself was far too ill and helpless to leave).

Among other things, I forgot to mention a close friend who my mother had known for 30 years. This lady, a Christian, had known me from the day I was born, she had met my mother many years before. As my parents trusted her completely, they gave her various items for safekeeping, among other things money, and as we had had to surrender our gold and silver, a gold ring that she had once given to me. As she had been bombed out herself, everything but the money and the ring had been lost. I visited her several times while I was living illegally and did some sewing

for her. After I was with the Dänes and she had already been bombed out I asked her to give the ring back to me, as she, living in the city, was at much greater risk of air raids than the Däne family, consequently everything would have been much safer in Conradshöhe. Her reply was, I’ve already given the ring to somebody else some time ago!

I felt as though I had been slapped on the face; by this she had made it clear that in her judgement I would not survive, so would never wear the ring again. Even the money I could only get from her with difficulty in instalments. She never asked what I was living off at that time. She should have offered me my parents’ money herself, especially as she knew the plight I was in, without a penny piece from home, with only the compassion and mercy of strangers to rely on.