925 – I remember once visiting with my father a Jewish matzah factory, situated behind a synagogue in Kohlhöfen. They had machines my father had built and delivered. Mr. Katz, the tenant, was there, and they celebrated something. Afterwards we ate matzot sprinkled with brown sugar.
1938 – Looking back later at those years, there is not much one would wish to remember. No brightness, no highlights,… a great part of my feelings is due to the circumstances at this time; it did not encourage any special joy of life – just in contrary to the general propaganda, literally going head over heels in stressing the new Joie de Vivre (Kraft durch Freude). We were not “anti-regime” per se; we had full trust in the “Führer”, believing he knew nothing about certain things that definitely went wrong at times. Somehow all of us had the feeling of being in prison.
In the course of the year this got worse and worse up to the point of anxiety, when in November the big Jew hunt began. Sometimes it really took our breath away.
We had always had much working-connection with Jews and never had any reason to complain. The last one to stay in the business was Mr. Katz, the tenant of the factory… He succeeded in baking matzot, partly even during the war – under the supervision of the Gestapo – and to sell them to Denmark for trading foreign exchange. He, too, landed up in a concentration camp, but was released after a short time and sent back to baking matzot – precisely in order to get access to foreign capital. There is no doubt it would have been the end of him, too, if he did not have a chance to escape to the United States at the beginning of 1941.
“…What Mr. Katz accomplished at his matzah factory is absolutely incredible; I think they have been working non-stop day and night during the last six weeks before Pessach…”
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