Until 1933 there was the period of unemployment. And then Adolf basically got the unemployed off the streets with the measures he took, like building the Autobahn. The people were content. They had a job, but what they did, well, that's another question. Nevertheless, they had a job...

We didn't have it bad. We actually had a carefree childhood and youth, at least until the war. I certainly can't complain. A civil servant's earnings were not exactly high back then, but one could live well. I mean, one basically had everything until 1939. The public assistance worked well. That anything was missing was not the case.

At meetings and rallies, it was maintained that since we Germans could not maintain ourselves any longer, we therefore had to take over countries like Russia and the Ukraine, or the breadbasket as one always said. And then in addition to that, in 1918 Germany had no colonies anymore after the lost world war. Before that we had several colonies in Africa and overseas. Now they were gone and Hitler had, of course, exploited this: "We don't have any more colonies. In order to continue to maintain ourselves and to proliferate, we need more land." The propaganda had prepared the people so that when the war broke out they were in favor of it. First came Czechoslovakia, when the Sudetenland was brought "home" into the Reich. That was another argument the Nazis used: "Wherever there are Germans, they have to come back into the Reich." Therefore, since there were Germans living there, one had a reason to invade.

The people were ecstatic over this. I can still remember that we were in the Erz mountains in 1938 and preparations were already under way. There were already troop movements. While we were up there with a car of some of our friends, we noticed that something was going on in the woods. And then they closed all the borders to the Czechs. Three or four weeks after that, we then heard on the radio that the Germans had marched into Czechoslovakia and the people were all for it. There was nobody who said this was wrong.

That's just the way things were done back then, and the great majority of the population had been prepared for it. Goebbels was the best propagandist there ever was. When he spoke, people were ecstatic. The population that eventually lost house and home were later no longer ecstatic.

Then the war came and the whole thing looked somewhat different. On September 1, 1939, the war broke out with the invasion of Poland. And then there were the ration cards. Most people experienced the rationing of foodstuffs, but not just foodstuffs. Practically everything was rationed, whether clothes or even cars or motorcycles. They even rationed gasoline. The only thing that always continued to burn during the war were the lights.

Criticism of the regime? Not in my vicinity, and not among my relatives either. Our landlord's sons were in the army, in the Wehrmacht. Of course, there was indeed criticism there. In those circles there was a lot of criticism. But otherwise? The only criticism [worth mentioning] was something we actually heard about only later.

My father had a cousin who was married to a Jew who was later killed in Theresienstadt. That was a truly unusual affair. Her husband had been, as a Jew, an officer in World War I, and until 1943 they had left him alone. It was only at the end of 1944 or the beginning of 1945 that we first found out that they had picked him up.

Back then Freithal had about 50,000 inhabitants. But in the city of Dresden with its 1 million inhabitants, everything was a bit more concentrated. Although we did not go to the city often, when we did, we would see them going around wearing their Jewish stars and then one would think about it.

Nevertheless, one has to take into consideration what the propaganda was like back then, what they hammered into people's heads. Over and over again, the same thing. And then the people also believed that it was right to mark them (with the Star of David), that they were bad people or bad human beings who were harmful to National Socialism, and that we had to eradicate them, and so on. That was the propaganda that was spread, and most, at least 75 percent [of the population], believed it. Because if they hadn't believed it, they would have gone to the barricades. But nobody went to the barricades. That is to say that they believed it. Such is life...

There was that large department store Eckstein. That was a Jew. It was a large department store and it offered good value. I can still remember that quite well, how they smashed in the shop windows and then posted signs: "Don't buy from Jews" or "This is a Jewish shop" or what have you. I can still remember that. One talked about that, of course. He had never done anything to anybody. He just ran his business, sold his wares, and at a fair price.