Our kitchen is a nice warm place where my mother is always busy cooking.

 

Every Thursday Mum begins baking for Shabbat. She makes a plaited egg loaf called challah, and cakes. The smell of baking mixes with the aroma of chicken soup and all the other delicious things we eat on Friday nights.

 

We set the table with our best dishes, crystal glasses and silver candlesticks. I love to watch Mum light the candles. She covers her eyes and is very serious, but then she smiles, as she blesses us children and wishes us Shabbat shalom.

 

Dad is forced to close his factory because the Nazi party wants him to make their uniforms. Of course Dad refuses. Life is more of a struggle now but he says honesty and integrity are more important than financial successes. The most precious gift he can give us, he says, is a shem tov, a good name.

 

 

There was a terrible night when a mob of people in the street were smashing glass and shouting awful things about Jews. We huddled in our apartment with the lights off and Mum and Dad looked very scared. The next morning the radio said it was safe to go out, so Dad went to get bread, milk and a newspaper.

 

Mum finds out he was taken by police, along with my uncle Lutz and my cousin Jupp. We don’t see them for weeks and Mum cries a lot. Somehow she gets them all released by promising they’ll leave Germany forever. When they come back they’re very thin. I almost don’t recognise them. Dad and my brother Heini leave quickly for Belgium. It’s safer there.