In the slip from 1941, on the a-year just before the lady experience into the “rubber manager,” ily and you may relatives discovered deportation commands to quantity camps certainly demise. This lady Sibling Grete, one of the primary are sent, begged Marie ahead along with her. «Sooner individuals would have to wade,» Grete reasoned. That have much complications, attending fit everything in imaginable to survive,» she shared with her aunt.
And therefore she decided to go to high lengths to guard by herself. Marie removed this lady red-colored star and you may assumed the newest name away from a good close friend, Johanna Koch, 17 many years more than Marie. Marie doctored Koch’s paperwork which have ink-erasing water and you may forged an endorsement stamp by hand, exchanged new images for the ID card, and titled herself Aryan.
On eve out of The second world war inside 1938, Marie and her father had been living with family members, the fresh new Waldmanns. Marie’s father and you can Frau Waldmann got a fling, and you may sixteen-year-old Marie took it upon herself to bed with Herr Waldmann, to lessen the possibility that he’d change Marie and her father on the trail in anger.
Later, looking to emigrate to Shanghai, she found a great Chinese boy located in Berlin who agreed to marry the girl: «Yourself I was thinking: if i can get a great Chinese passport compliment of him, that will be advanced level, however, this is simply not a love that will arrive at things.» But even after obtaining marriage, and you may creating a story on the carrying a child, she wouldn’t score permission regarding the mayor’s workplace to help you wed him.
But the scenes away from intimate business and you may sex politics illuminate a keen untold facts regarding thriving just like the good Jewish girl from the Berlin underground
While concealing in the apartment out of a good pal’s cleanup ladies, age by the so you’re able to painting the place. Both immediately became attracted to each other and you can wanted to get married. Marie helps it be so you’re able to Bulgaria with Mitko, and he discovers a great corrupt attorney exactly who could probably create their stay-in the world courtroom.
«I am able to fool around with her since the a great governess to have my little boy! The new documents would not cost one thing, if you take my personal meaning?,» he winked within the a serious trends.
Mitko, a naive however, decent profile, is indignant at that inappropriate suggestion. «We can do versus the services you provide,» he said brusquely, and then he endured up and kept.
The attorney became her or him inside Bulgarian police, and Marie try delivered back in order to Berlin alone. Mitko existed at the rear of that have friends, exhausted off days of getting to help you high lengths to guard Marie and you may themselves. Upon her go back, she try asked to go to on Gestapo so you can approve the woman “strange passport.” She narrowly fled this new Gestapo by the pretending to run shortly after a thief. One to night, having no place to keep as well as in necessity of a bathroom «into full performs,» she relieves by herself into the doormat from a family group having an excellent «Nazi ring» to its title.
Marie’s gripping, suspenseful story captures this new gloom and you may nervousness to be alone inside wartime Berlin therefore the struggle to survive for her individual. The lady usually and you may wit mirror the newest dedication and you can optimism away 
from almost every other accounts of your own Holocaust, such as those of diarists Viktor Frankl and you may Anne Honest.
Marie relays these stories, where gender is a way of staying live, an exchange, that have evenhandedness, with a sense it was all the beneficial
It is really not just bedfellows just who let the girl. Marie finds out sanctuary with non-Jewish household members invested in securing the lady, with individuals the lady father knew, along with other Jews unable to reside in Berlin. That buddy raises their so you’re able to Gerritt Burgers, a «crazy Dutchman» just who lead Marie to his flat and you may informs their landlady, good Nazi recommend named Frau Blase, one to