Today I want to describe my Wild West story quickly to you. So, the Gestapo checked our passports the first time in the local train to the border – all of us – and, guessing our intentions, sent us back. The second time, the company that arranges these things suggested the same route at a different time. Everything went to plan at first, we went through the German customs which had been bought off – were checked with our things, and then quickly off to an inn three minutes away. In the evening we crept into the station restaurant, whose owner is also the proprietor, planning to disappear from there one by one. But two minutes later a few Belgian gendarmes arrived and because a train had just left for A. and we were still sitting in the waiting room they suspected our purpose and did not move from the place. We did manage to hide, but did not come to the inn, were detected with torches and arrested with five other people, handed over to the German Gestapo, who put us in prison for that night and the following day. I.e. it was a room, ice cold, with three double-tier bunk beds, rather than Pritschen. It was locked tight from the outside so we could not disappear. We were four men and three women. You can imagine how wretched it was, as one knew not whether one would have to spend one or more days there. I was actually in rather good heart to have so many interesting new experiences. The next day we were fetched by the Gestapo, who spoke to us in a tone as though to criminals, everything “Du” [familiar “you”], and taken for interrogation. Two and a half hours of cross-questioning, but I was so peaceful as never before in my life. The only thing that annoyed me was the Passus I had to sign at the end, in which I had to agree never to let myself be seen in that area again and to undertake to travel to Berlin or be put in a concentration camp or prison.

Arrived back in Aachen, now without M., I rested for a couple of days, took my pack and set off with two old ladies of 65 years of age and a Viennese boy of 18. The journey was arranged by a reputable first-class firm, known as top notch in A. and K., and the old ladies went along with it too, in fact the guide was sent by the son of one of the ladies, who has lived in Belgium for many years, and I joined the group. When I asked the guide whether the journey would be safe, he answered that it was more of a gamble for him than for us, he worked at the Western Front – espionage zone. So as we drove in the car through the darkness I knew what danger we were putting ourselves into. After a half-hour journey we were set down and went across country in the pitch dark over ground so completely soaked that we got stuck in the mud, through barbed wire. Suddenly we had to remain stock still, hide, not speak, hardly breathe, so as not to give ourselves away; then onwards as before, again through barbed wire which tore our clothes to pieces. Now he left us hidden behind the fence of a cottage and went forward to see whether everything [was] safe. He did not come back because the police already knew about our presence in the area and that he was helping us.

We now sat on the ground all hidden by the small house so as not to be seen in the dark. Suddenly a light came on in the house and a frightened lady saw us lying on the ground. We asked if she could put out the light, we were Jews, we just wanted to cross over here – we were still on German soil - and she did that right away, after she had also told us that the little house belonged to the Kriminalpolizei. After half an hour a large dog suddenly arrived and leapt up at us at the fence, a light flashed on and a customs policeman was standing in front of us with a revolver, hands up or I shoot. Then hands behind our backs and march, march. Actually the car in which we had travelled had been picked up – as the officers themselves said to us – and the driver questioned, because of the espionage zone, everything was checked there, thus our presence there was already known for a long time.

If we had not been Jews, who everybody knows want to do nothing more than get over the border illegally, things would have gone very badly for us, I thought that straight away. The guide had also been discovered by patrols and so after questioning and a body search we were brought by car to the police prison in Aachen still in the night. Yet more hours-long interrogations there – sign the Passus again, saying that I had to go back to Berlin and not be seen at this border again, and we were lucky, we were let out and were back at the hotel at half past 3. I had always told the gentlemen of the Gestapo that my whole crime consisted only of wanting to go to my husband and children, that I am ordered to leave Germany anyway and how I should go now, as I cannot obtain a visa anywhere it was in their own interest to be rid of me. The answer was, we are not allowed to permit it any more on foreign policy grounds, and I must try to obtain visas. I had had enough of it now, and fearing never to be with H. and the children again I was gripped by despair – so much misfortune at once was too much. I decided quickly to put myself on the train, travelled to Cologne.

I then travelled here with my husband to my child, we had Swiss passports, through Basel, France and Luxembourg. We arrived successfully after a 20-hour journey. I cannot describe in detail all the interesting things that happened on the way, or I would have to write books. In any case, when one returns from such a journey one always has no money because one can only take RM. 10.- across and one does not reckon one will need more money in case one is sent back. So there are dreadful conditions. People hang around desperately for days or sometimes weeks waiting for a suitable journey. The two old ladies on the same journey that I was on it made it again three days later after a lot of encouragement from their sons and me, with another guide – sent by the same firm, however – and this time it worked out, and they were on Belgian soil in two and half hours. They had suggested that I go with them again, and I had refused because it was the border where I had agreed in writing never to let myself be seen again . . .