Marie Jalowicz lived in Berlin with her father. From the spring of 1940, the Jewish woman performed forced labor in a factory. She provoked her dismissal and managed to get herself removed from the Labor Office files as “deported.”
In June 1942, Jalowicz narrowly escaped arrest and went underground. Acquaintances and strangers took her in. She experienced sexualized violence and exploitation by helpers on several occasions. When she became pregnant against her will, she decided with a heavy heart to obtain an illicit abortion.
In September 1942, Marie Jalowicz and her friend Dimitr Tchakalov fled to Bulgaria. Shortly after their arrival, she was denounced as an alleged Russian spy and arrested. She was released with the help of a German civil servant, and returned to Berlin.
After almost three years in numerous hiding places, Marie Jalowicz experienced her liberation. She married her childhood friend Heinrich Simon in 1948 and became a professor of classical literature and culture at the Humboldt University.
At the request of her son, the historian Hermann Simon, she began dictating her story onto 77 cassettes in 1997. Her autobiography was published in 2014.