Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-08-21

1930

Yes.. I'm alive. I have to tell you about a game I had with Ilse. We had a hamper and I sat in it like a baby. And I was always hungry. We had a kind of shop. Father even had a shop made for me on which was written: "Enjoy buying from me, Inge" Father had that made for me. There were drawers which could hold a quarter kilo. Ilse pulled me around. First we played something else - I was always the "poor woman". ..We used to place pillows between the two doors - Ilse's and mine - so that there wasn't a draft in the winter.. And I had to kneel down there and beg. And Ilse would come and give me something. One day I said: "I don't want to play 'poor woman' anymore. I don't want to anymore." And so we stopped playing it because I didn't want to be the "poor woman" anymore. Ilse was really - we played different things. Ilse never played with dolls like other children - she played "in love, engaged, married" she knew a lot...about that. ..the way she often played.. she had the corner of her.. her dress or of something, a handkerchief, and she would hold it like this and then talk like this and play with it. I often laughed at her. She didn't really play with dolls like we, we children, did. But she was - first of all she was much smarter than I. Ilse was very intelligent. She remembered everything very easily. And she got along well with her parents - quite well. Only they spoiled her quite a bit. She had her own nanny and her mother had a cook and in winter there was even someone who baked biscuits and so on. ..here is a picture on the kitchen balcony. I always thought Ilse would become someone special. They got her, of all people.