Before I became an orphan of the Holocaust my early family life was stable. I grew up as a German Jew in Frankfurt, and I was in a household with two loving parents and an adoring grandmother who spoiled me. My mother helped my father in their wholesale business and they went to synagogue every Friday.
When the first armies were formed, combat took courage, which women share equally with men, and strength, which we do not. But though I am only 4 feet 7 inches tall, with a gun in my hand I am the equal of a soldier who's 6 feet 7 - perhaps even at a slight advantage, as I make a smaller target.
I learned to assemble a rifle in the dark and was trained as a sniper so that I could hit the center of the target time after time. As it happened, I never did get into actual combat, but that didn't prevent my being severely wounded. I almost lost both my feet as a result of a bombing attack on Jerusalem.