Fragrant Memory

"Where would one use perfume?" a young woman asked. "Wherever one wants to be kissed," I said.

Coco Chanel

My first bottle of perfume I received when I was 17. A year before I was liberated from the concentration camp in Auschwitz. I met in Munich an old man, he was 37 and I was 17, and of course, when we met he didn't said, "Hello nice to meet you, my name is Anthony Gruebel, and I am robbing banks for a living." We fell in love, he took me to a beauty parlour, to clean my hair from the lice, burned my dresses and bought me a white Hermelin cape, and then he gave me my first bottle of perfume, a bottle of Chanel No 5. This was the smell what made me forget the smoke from the crematorium and the hunger and the sorrow. Now I was the Cinderella with the white cape and beautiful smell, and always I am 17 again when I smell it.

Magda Watts (78) Dollmaker Extraordinaire