My father had been interested in the world back in 1939 and 1940, too. He had read about the Germans. He knew what hatred of Jews meant — it was part of everyday life in the southern Netherlands. My parents found each other again and my father managed to persuade my mother to go into hiding with him instead of obeying the notice ordering Jews to register for transport to the East. 

Counting all the nephews and cousins, there were about a hundred people in my parents' combined families. Six of them survived.

I grew up in the affluence that the Korean War bestowed on my father. He had a villa built and drove a Ford Mercury, an unusual car in Holland in those days. He had become wealthy — after he died, my mother had no difficulty feeding and clothing her four children, the oldest of whom was then 12, and showering them with birthday presents. 

He was 53 when he died; I was ten. There are ten thousand questions I want to ask him, questions I never even knew existed when I was a child.

In the area in which I grew up, they speak a southern Netherlands dialect. Brabant was divided in two when Belgium seceded in 1830, and in our region they speak in a mellow Flemish brogue. But even as a young boy, I was determined not to use the dialect. I spoke correct northern Dutch, no accent, perfect. It was impossible to hear that I came from the south of the country. I remember one of my earliest thoughts (I imagine it to be a memory, it's probably from later): I don't belong here.

The whole region knew my father, Jood de Winter, the rag-and-bone Jew who had made money and lived in a white villa on the edge of town and drove a flamboyant American car. My mother was small and round, a traditional Yiddish mother who smothered us with love and food. She always told my two brothers, my sister and me that if anyone asked what our father did, we should answer that he was a businessman — no one would ever ask, because anyone from the region called de Winter and a child, had to be Jood de Winter's child, the wealthy scrap merchant. 

And if anyone asked what our religion was, our mother told us to say that we had none — but anyone who lived in the region and knew our name knew that we were Jews because everyone knew Jood de Winter. 

My mother's sense of shame ran deep and it had a long history. Her mother, my grandmother, had walked from farm to farm across the south selling boxes of matches and shoelaces. As a child I heard that anecdote dozens of times — my mother repeated it over and over again. That was often when she was in her spacious kitchen, preparing an elaborate meal. She would have loved to be able to show her mother the many things she had, the brimming fridge and the pantry full of food, the huge garden, the good reports that I, her second child who looked just as dark and Mediterranean as she, brought home from school. I would be the first not to work with his hands.