On December 20, 1933, when I was five years old, I had just arrived in Amsterdam with my parents, escaping Berlin after Hitler came to power and fired my father, a deputy Cabinet member in the Prussian government during the Weimar Republic. We moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a residential neighborhood, overlooking green trees and neat squares.
One day, not long after our arrival, I walked hand in hand with my mother to a local grocery. There, my mother noticed another woman talking in German to her dark-eyed daughter, who was about my age. The two mothers spoke briefly to one another, smiling, clearly relieved to find some familiarity in this foreign place. I was a shy child and I clung to my mother’s leg, unused to other children but curious about the little girl looking back at me.
