One day, it must have been in the summer of 1942, Uncle Mohamed brought a Waffen-SS sergeant home from one of his visits to the exchange for “exotic” film actors. Over coffee and cake the sergeant told him and Aunt Martha about his war experiences in Russia. When he had left the ben Ahmeds told me in horror that the man had taken part in actions against Jews. The way he told it, they had killed so many Jews that they had run out of rope and had to carry on with wire. That was so appalling that at the time I didn't want to believe it. To this day I don't know what the man thought he was doing telling all that to total strangers – one of them a foreigner. Was he hoping that the atrocities would be made known, or was he just trying to provoke them?

In 1942 the British Air Force's night raids on Berlin were still sporadic, but in the course of the winter of 1942–43 they became more intense. The winter itself was long and particularly cold. In the spring of 1943 a group of Italian officers attached to the Berlin liaison staff of the Italian Army took up residence in the Hotel Alhambra. Director Fenner was tearing his hair, because the Italians brought spirit stoves with them and cooked their macaroni and spaghetti on the floors of their rooms. Their lady friends were also a constant source of irritation. After returning from Rome I had signed up for language classes at the Italian cultural institute and attended Italian lessons twice a week. I really enjoyed the language. I would rather have gone somewhere else for my lessons, but there was no other one that would let me in. The Italian cultural institute presented me with no obstacles and I was trying to improve my limited knowledge of Italian. I thus became the preferred contact person for the Italian officers, but also the buffer between them and the hotel management. I realized then that I had real diplomatic skills, and I learned how to exercise them.