I was just ten when my mother deposited me at the "Middle school" — a set of ultra- modern, Bauhaus-style buildings that housed children aged from six to 13 — and left me there to sink or swim. I sank, temporarily, at least. Most children at that age are not particularly kind when someone who can't speak their language and doesn't know how to play their games or follow their routines is placed in their midst. Even if they are kind, it is a miserable experience to be completely cut off, without a single family member or trusted friend in the whole country to speak to or confide in. Every evening I used to hide in a corner of the school's large, dark gym so that I could cry without being seen.

My mother would occasionally phone from Germany — a very difficult procedure in the late 1940s — and I would beg her to come and take me away. She always told me to hold on a little longer because things were bound to get better. Finally, she promised to fetch me if I was still unhappy after six months. When this longed-for day arrived, my mother broke her promise. She didn't come — and I never really forgave her.

Looking back now, as a mother myself, it is incomprehensible to me how any parent could abandon a child in this way — unless there is absolutely no other choice. It's true that the perception both of childhood and of parenthood in Western societies has greatly changed over the past 60 years. At that time, it was regarded as normal for parents who could afford the fees to send their children away for weeks on end at the age of eight. Innumerable memoirs of unhappy childhoods attest to this. 

Since then, we have become much more sensitive to the vulnerabilities and needs of children and to the importance of parental support. Nevertheless, I think my isolation, first in Switzerland and immediately afterwards in England, was unusually heartless even in those days. But then my parents were faced with a cruel dilemma, created by Hitler and anti-Semitism.

As it turned out, my mother had been right. Not long afterwards, I began to speak English fluently, I made many friends and became a fully integrated member of the school. Very occasionally my parents came to visit me, but my chief memory of these occasions is the embarrassment I felt because of their German accents. For the next eight years I was very happy at Dartington Hall. So much so that, during the holidays which I usually spent in Frankfurt where I had no friends, I used to wait feverishly for the beginning of the next term. As my parents had hoped, I had become thoroughly anglicised.

Much, perhaps too much, has been said and written about the importance of  "roots". Does being uprooted from the country in which you were born and where you spent half your childhood, leave some indefinable emotional scar? I don't believe so. In any case, it has been a commonplace occurrence ever since the beginning of the 20th century. I did, however, have a rather surprising experience when I went to see the Hollywood epic Exodus, sometime in my twenties. Before this very mediocre film begins, while the credits are rolling, the wide screen is filled with some beautiful panoramic scenes of Jerusalem and its surrounding hills and olive trees. As soon as I saw this, I unexpectedly burst into tears.