"Well, as it turns out, the Nazis were eradicating Jews at that point in all their occupied countries, as well as in Germany. And in 1943--I believe it was May 18-- they [Selma, Karl, and Ilse Simon] were arrested, and they were sent to Westerbork,…

"[My grandparents] did correspond with [my mother and Aunt Hiddie] quite a bit, and the last letter – I have a copy of it-- it told the girls in England that they had a lot of faith in God, that the girls-- Hilde and Ruth-- shouldn’t worry about…

“Steering a city through troublesome times is just like piloting a ship through stormy waters. You don’t know what you are going to run into but you are going to be ready for anything. You may have to go through obstacles instead of around them. Or…

“So everybody got out and then I got out. This was my first parachute jump. I went out through the navigator’s hatch below and I said ‘Lord, help me get through this.’ I knew I only had two things. One was to get killed or do it. There was no…

“I was happy as I could be or dumb and happy shall we say until I saw the first flight coming up. Our mission was to hit the V-1 bombs. They looked like ski jumps, so we called them ski jumps. They were on the coast of France... So our first mission…

“I felt absolutely ecstatic. I’ll try not to be self-appreciating, but I have one of the sexiest pictures of me you ever saw in your life of me in a helmet and goggles. It was absolutely fabulous.  I love it.  It is a beauty, it really is. I mean…

“They put us on the midnight shift and you had, it was at the shipyard and we weren’t close to the shipyard and we had to ride one bus and change buses in the middle of town and everything was blacked out. There was not a sight of light anywhere and…

"The final day of school they took everyone in our class and sent them to the amphibious forces in Camp Bradford, Virginia. Now, instead of having the nice Navy blues and so forth, they gave me an out of draft uniform, 30-30 rifle, combat shoes,…

"And then they sent me up to electrician’s school, and the most complex thing I had ever done electrically was to screw in a lightbulb, so why in the world they would pick me to go to electrician’s school, I have no idea. At any rate, that was a…

"Well, life on the base there, it was pretty good. The duty was light; we were just waiting for the ships, and they weren’t there. So we played cards. We went into town. There was very little else to do. There was a problem that I had, and again…