Free Underground in Berlin by Marie Jalowicz Simon

two metres away from her desk, holding the money, and explained, ‘I’m an honest woman. I’m sure no one would have noticed if I’d kept it.’ And very briefly, I described my situation.
    ‘Oh no!’ ‘Oh God!’ ‘Oh, I’m so sorry for you!’ ‘Oh, please don’t stand in that military position,’ she said, much affected. She was wearing an ivory necklace, and chewed on it in embarrassment now and then. Then she said, ‘You wait here a moment. I’ll go in and win the boss over!’
    Two minutes later she came out again, beaming, and said, ‘You’ll go on getting the pension. But there’s no legal basis for it, and it would be disastrous to create such a precedent. So you mustn’t mention it to a soul.’
    I thanked her fervently, and of course I promised to keep my mouth shut. I thought to myself: not only are our enemies prejudiced against us, we have prejudices of our own against all non-Jews. This young lady was so helpful and sympathetic. Why must we be such total strangers to each other?
    I had been so impressed by her habit of chewing her necklace that I went into Woolworth’s and spent fifty pfennigs on the cheapest necklace in the store, incredibly ugly and raspberry-red. I wanted it to put it in my mouth; it was like a compulsion. When my friend Irene Scherhey saw it she asked, ‘Are you crazy? What a frightful necklace! I’ve never seen you wear anything like that before.’
    ‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘I must have left it lying around somewhere.’ And then I threw it away.
    I went back to forced labour after those weeks off. Some things had changed. Edith Rödelsheimer, who had been working for a while as wages clerk, could no longer hold that elevated position because she was Jewish. In her place, one Fräulein Lorenz, an uneducated worker from another department, was given the job. She might find reading and writing difficult, but she was Aryan. And Edith Rödelsheimer the musicologist had to operate a stamping machine, a job that would normally have been done by an automaton. The unbalanced physical activity hurt her arms terribly, but she was glad that she wasn’t required to be more attentive in any other way. In her mind she was singing her way through whole operatic scores from A to Z.
    Soon after my return I had a long conversation with our supervisor, Schönfeld the SS man. I went off to his cubicle so that he could inspect a screw I had made: he had to certify that the machine was correctly set and that its product passed muster before I could begin making a prescribed number of parts.
    ‘So you’ve been certified off sick?’ he asked as he held up the screw to the light. There was concern in his voice. Of course we were under observation from where he sat in his glass box with a view of the whole workshop. ‘My father died,’ I replied. He looked at me with great intensity and sympathy, and condoled with me silently. He could not reach out a hand to me, but our mere eye contact did not escape the notice of my colleagues outside.
    I plucked up my courage. ‘I want to leave this job,’ I said. ‘But as I’m doing forced labour I can’t give notice.’
    ‘Why do you want to leave us?’
    ‘I want to save myself.’
    ‘But I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’ll be sent to some other workplace, and you won’t find such pleasant colleagues anywhere else. I chose my best tool-setter for the nicest girls.’ He really did seem to be concerned for me. ‘What will you do on your own?’ he went on. ‘Out there you’ll be alone in the icy wastes.’
    ‘That’s where I want to be, and I want to be alone. Because I can see where all this is going. They’ll deport us, and that will be the end for all of us,’ I said. He nodded his head briefly; the movement was barely visible. ‘We won’t be safe from deportation for ever as armaments workers,’ I went on.
    ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll fix it. We’ll fire you for sickness. God bless you, and I wish