"[My grandfather, father, and aunt] tried to get help from the American authorities, but the Americans had no knowledge about what was happening either, and if they did, they probably even couldn’t say because the relationship between the…

"They were not able to move back into the former home, but they moved into an apartment near where they had lived. I believe the original structure was bombed. And I know that they were able to collect some of their original belongings they had…

"I don’t know if he was able to be in contact—if my grandfather was able to be in contact with his brother in Shanghai. They never really said. When I spoke with Kurt’s sons, I never really got a sense that they stayed in contact. Now, Kurt’s…

"At the end of the war, [my father and his family] were actually still living in what would be considered the Western sector in the U.S. administered part of Berlin. My father’s comment to me—The only comment was that I can recall, after the…

"My father tells stories of how occasionally he would leave the city and go to a farm area. And someone would allow him to work for them in exchange for food. And he would sleep in the barn. And he said that happened to him a couple of times.…

"Right. [My grandfather Alexander] had a sister Frieda, a brother Gustav, and another sister Gertrude. In 1942-1943 they were all taken. And nobody really knows their fate. They were taken and never seen again. And also his mother, Johanna…

"I believe [my father's family] thought that this would all pass, you know. Because there had been anti-Semitism before. It was kind of underlying in the culture, but no one ever thought that this would really come to pass. And their…

"The family made plans to separate when it became clear that their lives were in danger. They found friends that they could stay with separately. They set up times to meet. And they would never all be together the four of them. They would pass…

"[Alexander Jacobi, my paternal grandfather,] was born in a small town in what was then Prussia called Schönlanke. It’s now Trzcianka in Poland. I don’t know that much about what his family life was about. I know that he had an older brother…

"My father was born in December of 1924 in Berlin. They were fairly well-off economically. He was one of two children. He was the older of the two. His sister, Ruth, was born a couple years later. My grandfather was a leather maker-- at…