I need to tell you this story because, now that I am 66,

it feels as if I have carried it for a long time.

It is my pre-history and was told to me by my

parents, my uncle and aunt, my cousin, and brother in

separate slices, all with the aim of ensuring that I knew

where they and I came from. I am perhaps the only

one who heard from all of them. Perhaps they all

intended to give me a gift to pass on.

It is the story of how they, and ultimately their

children, were torn from a milieu where their families

had lived for generations and then were thrown into

the chaotic storm of World War II and its aftermath. It

is about their luck in avoiding the Holocaust. It is

about the courage involved in leaving everything

behind, to run away in order to live, to prevail by

surviving and to rebuild a normal life in a new home.

It is also about the costs of doing so. This is my

retelling of what they told me since it also became my

story. To some extent it is a story that has affected all

their descendants. The story must, in part, go on. And

because I am the only one who heard from all of them,

I am under a compulsion, which they also passed to

me, to tell and retell what I have been told and what I

have lived with and to recount it with as much love

and truth as I can muster.