While they were in the Judenhaus in Dresden, awaiting deportation, Victor Klemperer came to know them and wrote about them in his diary,[7] published decades later in 1995, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten,[1] I Will Bear Witness to the Bitter End, translated into English in three volumes.
In Trede's memoir, the description of this moment is followed by an excerpt from a letter written to his mother about Wilhelm and Pilar Marckwald's arrival at Trench Hall.
[1] Performances were already a regular feature at Bunce Court, a German-Jewish boarding school that had left Nazi Germany for Kent, England and become a haven for refugees, both pupils and staff.
After England declared war on Germany, the school was evacuated to Trench Hall in Wem, Shropshire[8] and the frequent performances continued.
Marckwald began organizing a theatre group and treated them as he had his professional adult actors, as Trede wrote in a letter to his mother, dated 26 November 1942.
He described an improvisational exercise the children were given: a person entering a house in some fashion at some point in time and finding a letter on a table.