Item 19

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On Pentecost Sunday or Monday,
Papa got a phone call early in the morning.
He was just in his pajama bottoms.
He almost fell over. Mama cried
and when I wanted to play the piano
Mama came to me and said,
“Inge, you mustn’t play, the Premingers
are dead, there was an escape of gas.[”]
But at noon Mama heard told me:
“Inge, the Premingers have committed suicide,
they turned on the gas.
Mr. Preminger went insane.”
At school,
Mrs. Lettocha is there, tear-stained,
Mama was at the funeral, and

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the children talked of nothing else and
the teachers were almost unwilling
to believe what I told them. It is dreadful.
For almost 5 weeks now we have been here
in London.
London, August 21, 1938
Yesterday, the Roughly one month after
the overthrow, English German
money was introduced. People didn’t know
their way around at all, because now schillings and
groschen were together. Bit by
bit then schillings and groschen
were dropped and there were only
marks and pfennigs except for the one- and
two-groschen coins, which counted