Tag #130837 - Interview #78461 (Stefan Guth)

I liked the job there and after a while I was appointed manager of the laboratory. After a while there was some kind of reorganization and I was appointed chief engineer. I was very surprised, and so was everybody else. That was very interesting because Jews weren’t usually appointed for managerial positions, and moreover, without being a member of the Communist Party; and I was a Jew, and I wasn’t a party member. At least at the time of the appointment, because a week later the party secretary showed up at my office with my application for entering the Party. I was facing a dilemma because I had a family and two sons: if I hadn’t signed it, I would have lost everything, not just the new job, but the former one as well, so I signed it and became a party member; but my involvement in the Party was never more than having a membership card.