It was Friday night. I remember it clearly. In my mind I can see us all sitting around the dining room table. My father, Max, sits down at the head of the table. Golda, my mother, starts lighting the Shabbat candles. My little brother, Charlie, who is not quite three, sits beside me. He is kicking my leg under the table. My older brother, Heinz, sits opposite my mother. As we begin to eat the challah and chicken soup, my father says, "I have something important to say tonight. This is very difficult for us, but your mother and I have decided that the two of you, Heinz and Benno, will leave Berlin in the next few days. It's not safe here anymore for us Jews. We will follow as soon as we can."
This was the last Friday night dinner we were together as a family.
...
During that Friday night dinner in January, my parents outlined their simple escape plan to us. They had made it quickly, not really knowing the conditions outside Germany. At first they were going to send us to Belgium. Then they learned of the two boys down the street who were caught trying to enter Belgium and hadn’t been heard from since…
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, Papa expected my brother and me to leave by ourselves. The two of us had never done anything on our own before. We were going on a train, all alone, with no one to tell us what to do. “We’re going to have a new experience,” I thought at first. Little did I realize how much this train ride would change my life, or that it would take me away from the family I loved so much…
As I lay in bed that night, I thought about the next morning. I tossed and turned as I tried to imagine a life without my parents and little brother. Charlie and I shared a bedroom. He was still a little boy, but we had become close over the last few months. I was going to miss him a lot.
I was thinking about what I should bring on our journey when my eyes closed and I drifted off to sleep.
"We're stopping, the train is stopping," my brother said to me quietly. We were sitting far from the centre of the platform as the train pulled in, to make sure the guards standing there did not see us. A train official peered into our compartment and asked to see our tickets. I sat up straight and held my breath. Was he going to tell us to get off the train?