Gertrude Eckert remembers:
After the children were sent to Holland in 1939, Mrs. Strauss came to Fulda to see us.
She was crying terribly and her whole body shook. Neither my mother nor I could
comfort her. We called my father at the tax office and asked him to come home, because
we didn’t know what to do. My parents took turns hugging Lilly, until finally she
calmed down somewhat. I never saw a person so beside oneself from heartache.
About two weeks before the Strauss’ were hauled off, back in 1941, we called on them
at the house, although nobody was permitted to do so anymore since the SA was guarding
the front door. This is how we did it: The house next door at Gartenstrasse belonged to
Mrs. Lohrengel. On evenings she left the basement door to her yard open, and so we
could get into the yard. The yard was adjacent to Strauss’ yard, and there had always
been a small connecting door.
However, the Nazis didn’t notice that. The SA was standing guard in front of the Strauss’
house, and we went to the Strauss’ through Lorengel’s yard. It just looked like we were
going to Mrs. Lorengel’s. But actually one went just through the front door, then down
into the basement, out the basement door into the yard, and then through the small
connecting door from the back into the yard of the Strauss’. The SA thought one walks
over to the Lorengel’s. They couldn’t look in from the outside because it was like a blind
spot. At that time only old Mrs. Lorengel was still alive, and she always had a good
relationship with the Strauss’. The one who was last to leave the Strauss’ had to close
the door shut, but there were only a few initiated familiar with that connecting door.
At that time they were in the process of packing.