Marion Fuerst was a schoolgirl in Stuttgart, Germany, when the Nazis came to power. She was nineteen years old, and World War II had not yet begun when she went to work in a department store as a cashier. It was a time when persecution was making Germany an intolerable place for Jews. They were desperate to leave the country, but the Nazis placed many obstacles in their way. A group of sympathetic Stuttgart businessmen financed a network to help these Jews. They recruited Fuerst to help them.
She was tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and attractive--the very picture of young German womanhood glorified by the Nazis. Her Aryan looks put her beyond suspicion. The network supplied her with forged documents, doctored passports, phony visas, train tickets, and packets of money. Before leaving for work, she would hide these under her clothes, distributing them in different undergarments so that they would not make any lumps, which might be noticed. When a Jewish customer whispered a password--usually a Latin phrase--while paying for a purchase, Fuerst would slip the designated items into the package she was wrapping.