Aryan. Mrs G. fought off the attacks, repeating, “I don’t know anything. I’m innocent.”
[128] She was once again released.
The agent came for her again. Mr J. returned after a week. He had been released thanks to intervention by his influential German friends, who probably also helped him get back Mrs G.’s requisitioned possessions. He did not manage to get the piano back, though, and the requisitioned food supplies were irretrievably lost, too.
His intimate contacts with Mrs G. did not alter after his release. They only avoided being seen together on the street in fear of being followed by agents. Besides, 14 November 1940 came411 —the deadline for Aryans to move out of the ghetto. Mr J. moved out of Mrs G.’s flat, but their contacts did not stop. Initially, Mr J. visited his girlfriend every day. He often came at 8 p.m., stayed over and left at 5 or 6 a.m. The tenement superintendent, Mr E., would later say that judging from the strong smell of alcohol and his whole appearance he surely had some fun at night. Late in the evening, Mrs G.’s mother often knocked on her neighbours’s door to borrow some genuine coffee to make Mr J.’s favourite coffee with liqueur or cognac. She went to great lengths to satisfy the palatal and drinking preferences of her daughter’s friend because they needed him. The family was going through a financial crisis. They sold the rest of their possessions, rented a locale on one of the main, busiest streets of the ghetto, and opened a restaurant. Mrs G. became the heart and soul of the new business. She worked hard as a waitress. She also took care of food purchases, with Mr J. helping her enormously in that respect. [131] Thanks to him she bought various food products at prices that enabled her to compete with other restaurants. With time, however, his visits and help grew less and less frequent, only to cease completely in the end. The family business tottered. Mrs G. tried to save it through contacts with Jewish policemen, but her efforts were Sisyphean labour. The restaurant was closed after nine months. Mrs G.’s family went totally bankrupt and began to starve. Mrs G. did her best to find new sources of income.
During that period Mrs G.’s neighbour opened a club/restaurant on G. Street and Mrs G. offered to work there as a waitress. It was an attractive job not in terms of the financial profits it would bring (she knew that earnings
