European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

in the way that the encoded text was to be pricked from the back side with a needle at certain letters.

The letters had to be filtered out by holding the paper into the light and then it was decoded.

It was not noticeable that we were communicating in cipher.

When the war began, another important thing happened.

With the attack on Poland,

the ‘Wehrmacht’ and the German air force were looking for ’Blitzmädchen’ (female military Helpers during World War II),

which were able to help as radio operators in the occupied areas.

Eight of our female comrades volunteered.

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.