After Kristallnacht, we were no longer able to attend regular school in Furstenwalde. I then went to a Jewish school in Frankfurt which was about a half an hour away.
With the help of the Joint (JDC), my family members were able to get an affidavit to go to Shanghai, China. In August, 1940, I left Germany for Shanghai. My parents, my brother Alfred and me did not look Jewish. I was 9 years old when we left.
We went by train through Russia on our way to China. The windows of the train were covered with paper and we could not see. We sent through Siberia to Harbin, China. We arrived in Shanghai in June or September, 1940.
In Shanghai, we lived in the ghetto. There were about 20,000 Jews in the ghetto. It was dirty, and there was no running water. We had no money because we sold everything we had to survive. We had to pay for hot water. I learned to sew and became a dressmaker. My brother, Alfred, became a baker. The Americans came into China in 1945.