With my parents – Frieda Stüfke (b. October 18, 1890) & Emil Czerny (b. January 17, 1886)
I remember my father had a printing machine in the attic and once in a while two young men came to us and would disappear into the attic. I learned much later that they printed communist pamphlets there, against Hitler. Very dangerous business.
In 1932 we moved into the little house my parents had built. At this time my father got very sick and we almost lost him. It was before penicillin and a bad ear infection was almost deadly. He lost his hearing in one ear, but this did not stop him from being very active in the communists fight against Hitler. Behind the house, in between fruit trees, was a very tall pole and often the same young men came to us and out of the room they disappeared into, I heard clicking noises, which were morse code signals. I was nine years old then, and had no idea they were sending messages to Moscow.
All this came to an abrupt ending, when on January 1933 Hitler became ruler of Germany. That day I have never forgotten. In the evening we had many men around our kitchen table, listening to the radio. When I asked my mother what this is all about and who is this Hitler anyway, she said these exact words to me, “Hitler is somebody who wants war!” How right she was.
My father stopped after that to be politically active. He knew very well to work underground was like suicide. Our very good friends got executed because they were hiding party friends who were on the run. What a horrible nightmare that was.
From Ursula’s autobiography, Leaving Berlin.
Ursula Grimm 