The Jewish Museum Westphalia, Dorsten is publishing the first part of the memoires of its former manager, Johanna Eichmann. Published under the title "You nix Jew, you blond, you German!" (Memories 1926-1952), the book describes her childhood and youth in Westphalia, mainly during the Nazi period.
During that dark era, the "half-Jewish" Johanna Eichmann was considered by the majority of the Germans as part of the Jewish community.
Increasingly harassed in school and outside it by peers taught to hate, and later to attack all Jews, Johanna escapes into the safe environment of a Catholic school.
Upon graduation, with her intended career in education forbidden to her on account of her mixed parentage, the young woman arrived in Berlin, where she worked in a French Commissariat which took care of the forced laborers displaced from France, until in the last months of the war she became a forced laborer herself.
The first part publication was coincided with her 85th birthday this month. The 128-page work will be followed by the second part in about a year.
The book is expected to be available from Amazon in March 2011
