1933-39: Herta married Siegfried Wohlfarth in 1933 and could change from being "stateless" to taking on his German citizenship. The Nazis were in power and Siegfried had been fired from his job because he was Jewish. Now that Herta had citizenship, she could get a German passport and leave the country. In 1934 the couple left for Amsterdam. There Herta gave birth to a daughter, Doris, and by 1937 had become an interior decorator.

1940-44: The Germans occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. When the Wohlfarths were told to report to the train station at 1:30 a.m. on July 15, 1942, to go to a work camp, Siegfried and Helene decided to go into hiding. For a year they had prepared for this by not kissing or hugging their daughter so she wouldn't miss them when they left her with Christian friends. Aided by the Dutch underground, Helene and Siegfried hid together in several locations until August 25, 1944, when they were both arrested.

Herta survived deportation to Auschwitz and was liberated in the Kratzau work camp by Russian troops on May 9, 1945. She and her daughter emigrated to the U.S. in 1947.

1933-39: Celebrating Jewish holidays with all my aunts and uncles was really nice. One of my favorite places was the zoo; I especially liked the monkeys. When the Nazis forced Jewish children out of public school, I began attending a Jewish school. I was "a daddy's girl," and my father would take me home from school on his bike. After the Nazis burned our school, my older brother left for safety in Britain--I was too young to go with him.

1940-44: In 1940, when I was 10, our family was sent to Gurs and then Rivesaltes, terrible camps in southern France. The food was awful. The Jewish Children's Aid Society took me away and placed me in a Catholic convent along with 13 other Jewish girls. I became Irene Fanchet and studied under Sister Theresa. One day, the SS came to our convent looking for hidden German-Jewish children. One of our girls, who was fluent in French, did the talking for us. It worked. The Germans left, and we were safe.

Thirteen-year-old Irene was freed by Allied troops in July 1944. After being transferred to several children's homes in France, she emigrated to the United States in 1947.

1933-39: In April 1933 our studio, like the other Jewish businesses in Karlsruhe, was plastered with signs during the Anti-Jewish boycott: "Don't buy from Jews." At school, a classmate made me so furious with her taunts that I ripped her sweater. After the November 1938 pogroms the studio was busy making photos for the new ID cards marked "J" that Jews had to carry. The studio remained open until December 31 when all Jewish businesses had to be closed.

1940-44: In 1940 we were deported to Gurs, a Vichy detention camp on the French-Spanish border. I learned from a social worker there that a pastor in Le Chambon village wanted to bring children out of the camp. This social worker, from the Children's Aid Society, got me out. Being free was heavenly. But by 1942 the German roundups reached even to Le Chambon and I was sent to hide at two different farms. The farmers were glad to help. One said, "Even if we have less, we want to help more people." In early 1943 I escaped to Switzerland.

After the war, Hanne lived in various cities in Switzerland. In 1945 she married Max Liebmann and three years later she emigrated with her husband and daughter to the United States.

1933-39: In addition to attending secondary school for five days of the week, I also went to a Jewish religious school on the other two days. I began to take on increasing responsibilities in my scouting troop. In 1936, when I was 16, I became the leader of the troop, in charge of 35 girls. Two years later, in 1938, I graduated from secondary school and began to study early childhood education and social work.

1940-44: Early in 1940 I took a teaching job in Paris. When Germany invaded France that May, my family fled to the south. A friend working with OSE, a Jewish aid society, asked me to be a resident social worker in Rivesaltes, an internment camp for foreign-born Jews near the Spanish border. We tried to provide the adults with forged documents, but for each person we managed to get off the trains, the Nazis substituted someone else. But we rescued most of the children in the camp before the deportations began in 1942.

For the remainder of the war, Simone assumed a false name and joined the OSE underground network to hide Jewish children in southern France. In 1949 she emigrated to America.