It was an evening of programmes dedicated to the Second World War, and especially to the deportation of the Jews, who were put in camps of some sort, where they were worked into the ground and then killed. There were pictures of whole populations leaving their houses and walking in lines to the railway stations, overseen by guards. Then all of them – men, women and children – were forced to climb into the trains and taken to who knows where. I tried to get Dad to explain. I asked him if all those people knew what they were in for, and why they didn’t run away.

“They must have thought they were just going to be made to work,” replied Dad. “They didn’t realize they were in such danger. Who could have imagined it?”

“But Dad, for a start it’s not that great to work for nothing… And secondly, all those people, they must surely have realized that the locals were hostile…”

“After being beaten by rifle butts and whatnot, they surely must have realized in the end. But they could never have dreamt that they were going to be annihilated like that. Why would they have thought that, when they’d done nothing wrong? And then, you know, they were dying of hunger in the ghettos, everything was in turmoil…”

“Ghettos?”

Dad pointed at the dictionary on the table. I understood what he was getting at. I hunted for the word… Ghetto, ghetto … there it was:

Ghetto Jewish quarter; district where Jews were forced to live.

“They were no more naïve or submissive than anyone else, but when they were told that they’d be better off in specially built camps than in the ghettos, well, many of them believed it. And anyway, what choice did they have?”

I let my thoughts travel back into the distant past. My grandfather had also come from the East. And it occurred to me that by getting to France just before the war, he’d escaped all the dangers that we’d seen on the TV screen.

“Dad, do you think Grandpa came from that part of Europe?”

“Yes, not very far from there. He left the village of Lemberg, in Galicia, to escape the pogroms. Then he travelled through Poland, Hungary, Romania…”

My eyes followed Dad’s finger through the air as it traced Grandpa’s journey across Europe.

“Progammes? What kind of programmes?”

“Pogroms, you noodle. Organized persecution, if you like.”

“And so he escaped, your father, because he travelled west?”

“Yes, he got away.”

“So, hey, it was by following the sun that Grandpa managed to avoid all that!”

I was quite proud of having an ancestor who’d got out of difficulties by hitching his fortunes to the sun. I thought it was a smart way to stay alive.

Dad began to leaf through the Krebs manual, but I felt like staying a bit longer with him and reminiscing about the past.