European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

They had to be let in on our cipher, which only the hard core had known.

We had to keep up the contact, and they had to, wherever they were, get in touch with the local partisans.

After having been badly wounded, I was retrained as a radio operator in the punishment battalion in Africa.

Of course this was a second option to communicate quickly.

Every radio operator had the opportunity to communicate via radio as long as there was another radio operator somewhere else.

You only had to be careful, because the ‘Gestapo’ and the ‘SS’ intercepted everything.

But it worked, you could communicate via radio, as well.

Me, for example, and there are not many who achieved something like that,

I had connection to my party leader exiled in London from 1941 until 1945.

Coded mail went to Bergen in Norway.

There sat a comrade of ours as a ’Blitzmädchen’, she had connection to the partisans.

They took the mail to Sweden.

In Stockholm was the secretary general of my party

and he established the connection from Stockholm to London via plane.

Until the enquiry came back:

“How is the mood in the population?

Where are places for paratroopers to jump

where to the same time a social background can be found, so they can live and operate safely?”

These sorts of questions came and they were answered.

Later on it worked even faster, because a comrade,