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There she met two GIs, a black man from New York and a white one from Philadelphia, they were super models for her. “And once again I was able to speak English. I offered the two a guided tour through the museum. Howard from Philadelphia – who had seen action in Northern Africa and Italy – insisted on getting my address. And soon we wrote letters back and forth and talked about Chinese philosophy. I found this very adventurous.”

One day in 1947, a few months after his discharge, Howard appeared on the doorsteps of her family’s apartment in the Badenerstrasse. “Self-confident, he announced that we should get married.” Howard was an American Quaker who, enraged about Hitler, had volunteered for the Army; he stayed in Switzerland for three months to get to know Ellen. “And he persisted in wanting to marry me. I saw things differently. I felt too young and too inexperienced as I was just 21 and Howard Gillespie was 19 years older. ‘You came here to see how you would like it. Now I will first go and see how I would like America’, was my answer.”