He (Hitler) got rid of unemployment. Just about everybody had a job. He helped poor families with lots of children. Families with lots of children got preferential coupons for foodstuffs, for clothing. They could buy them for less. Security for the population was restored. Crime disappeared completely. And, finally, the cultural amenities also contributed to Hitler's popularity, like the Strength through Joy Program, inexpensive visits to the theater, and things contributing to the population's cultural life in general. That won a lot of support for him.

Workers were given a greater say in matters in the factories. The boss no longer decided things alone. The eight-hour-day was introduced throughout the country. I know that we at first worked on Saturdays like any other day. Then came the regulation stating that the work week would end at midday on Saturday afternoon.

As older children, we were at first wild with enthusiasm about the Nazi regime. There was, of course, the Hitler Youth, which my father was against. Therefore, even though the school exerted a bit of pressure on us to join, I was among those who were not in the League of German Girls (BDM). And it was not pleasant for an older child to have to stand on the sidelines, because that is not one's inclination.

What I considered negative were the street collections, which were held for one reason or another nearly every week. Collections were held for this and that-and in a rather pushy way. And house wardens were assigned to go around from house to house with lists for collections. And this was also pushed on you. The notion was that, "Whoever doesn't donate is the enemy."

Among our relatives we had one who was a convinced communist. Whenever we got together, there was always an argument. He was actually the only active communist in the family, while the other relatives, like my father, were mostly social democrats. Still, my father did not display his opposition openly. In public he remained rather quiet about this. He only let it be known among friends and relatives when he knew exactly whom he was dealing with. And we already knew at the time that a good number of people had already been picked up who had shown themselves in public to have been active communists or active social democrats.

In the area where we lived, here in Leptau, near the Freiburgerstrasse and St. Anthoniastrasse, there weren't any Jews. There were, however, Jews at school. I went to school with a Jewish girl. She was highly intelligent, pretty as a picture. She never let herself get mad. From the start, she kind of set the tone in class. One time during a physical fitness period when we had to let ourselves be timed with a stopwatch, she got angry with the teacher for some reason and said, "Let's all run really slow and make him mad." And we all did it too!

She had friends in school. She was good-natured. She was only protective about her private life. She never spoke about private matters. She never told us about her family life. There were other Jewish girls at school - not in my class, but in other classes-with whom she mostly hung around. They spoke Hebrew among themselves. When I left this school in 1935, she was still in that class. I don't know any details about what happened later to her...

Well, there had been a tendency over several years to present the Jews as exploiters. And when that has always been pounded into people's heads, people will also believe it. There was, however, a large part of the population who didn't think that was quite right and who said, "They're fleecing us. They're making money from us, and so on." Certainly there was something of a negative attitude toward the Jews, but before Hitler it did not exist to the same extent. One tolerated them. One let them live. There was never any particular sympathy for the Jews. But to directly label them as our enemies and exploiters, that came from Hitler.

At first, we shopped in Jewish stores, probably because they were less expensive than other stores. But then they closed little by little and eventually there weren't any more of them. They had been taken over by others. We went shopping in the Kaiserwerther Strasse. The larger shops there were all owned by Jews. That was well-known. Also it was well-known that department stores and larger shops in the city center were Jewish. Signs were taped on the windows and doors of the Jewish shops and department stores saying "Jew" and so on, and we didn't trust ourselves anymore to shop there because it was said that we were being watched. And we believed that.

Oh, that came very late. It was toward the end of the war that we found out about that. I can't say exactly when that was. You had not personally experienced it. You didn't know anybody. It was only talked about. We did experience one thing though. A half-Jewish woman lived in my in-laws' building. She was married to a German. She didn't receive her food ration cards from her distributor. She had to pick them up at a certain office. Her mother lived with her. I don't know what was going on with the food ration cards. Her mother stayed there for the rest of her life. She was already old. They didn't take her away. She died at her daughter's place.

Some people's opinion of Hitler fell already at the start of the war. Already at that time my father and his buddies said, "He's crazy. What does he want?" And as one country after another was taken over, they said, "This is absurd. How does he intend to keep this under control?" As the defeats piled up, public opinion against Hitler grew, but a large part of the population still trusted him, "He'll pull it off! The wonder weapons will come along! He'll defeat them yet!" Nobody thought any further about what things would be like then. The soldiers sent things home from the occupied countries, wonderful things. And that had helped the people in their duress. We had practically nothing left to eat and nothing to put on."