His family history, he said, was rather
complicated.
But, to cut a long story short,
he married his wife twenty years ago, and her
father (or was it her stepfather?), who grew up
as a Jewish boy in pre-war Germany, was sent
to boarding school in the...
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His family history, he said, was rather
complicated.
But, to cut a long story short,
he married his wife twenty years ago, and her
father (or was it her stepfather?), who grew up
as a Jewish boy in pre-war Germany, was sent
to boarding school in the UK to escape the
regime.
A few years later, however, he had to
leave the UK, being regarded a German, and
as such, a potential enemy.
This was, why he
came to Canada, where he met his future wife.
And how did you come to Berlin in the first place?
My wife, you need to know, was the only child and thus legal heir of her father’s family
property in Berlin – a property lost when the family was expelled from their building in BerlinMitte, the very building we are in now.
After the war, it became State property.
Only in the
early ‘80s, the dispersed descendants of the original owners managed to enter negotiations
with the city of Berlin-East.
Years passed, but the conditions for regaining the property were
still not
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