Recalling her life in Europe, Margot Freudenberg recaps her early years and experiences before emigrating. She was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1907 to Dr. Henry and Elle Gunts Strauss. With no large Jewish population there, most of her friends were non-Jewish. Her parents were reform Jews and although she attended synagogue, she did not receive much Jewish or Hebrew education. She was aware of anti-Semitism very early on and tried to get out of Germany before many others did, registering for various countries and trying to get past their quota system. She married Walter Freudenberg in Essen, Germany, in 1928, after only knowing him a few months, in a marriage arranged by family. Their son was born in 1929; both he and his father had illnesses that required physicians. She recounts the dangers and difficulties in being a Jewish patient seeking treatment. A witness to Kristallnacht in Berlin, in 1938, she was forced to clean sidewalks with a toothbrush and was beaten by the SS. Her parents were able to emigrate to England in 1938 through the agency of an uncle there. She, her husband, and son left in 1939, and eventually settled in Charleston, South Carolina, to be near her sister Hilde (b. 1903), who had married Ludwig Rothschild and had bought a store in Greenville, SC. She speaks of her early days in Charleston, where most Jewish people she met were helpful, while one told her to leave and no refugees were wanted. She worked as a physical therapist and her husband ran a haberdashery; her sister died in 1945. Her parents came to live with her full time then; her husband died in 1958 and she never remarried, stating instead that through her civic work, she instead is "married to the whole city."
