‘What kind of name have you given me?’ I asked him.

‘A beautiful name,’ he replied.

I couldn’t help thinking of one of my aunts, who had once been seriously ill. They had prayed for her in the synagogue and had given her another name – a beautiful name taken from the Bible – and she had recovered.

In the bus I inspected the identity card. It had a photo of me with my light hair, as well as a fingerprint. I read the name. It felt as though I was being introduced to myself. I repeated the name a few times, softly to myself.

Later, when we were walking past a narrow waterway, Wout pointed to a low, old house.

‘This is it,’ he said. ‘You’ll be completely safe here.’

We crossed a bridge with an iron railing. A tall blonde girl came toward us. I told her my name – my new name.

Epilogue

The tram stop

Some weeks after liberation, I went to visit my uncle in Zeist. The Germans had left him alone because he was married to a non-Jewish woman. Although I hadn’t written to let him know I was coming, I saw him standing at the tram stop.

‘How did you know that I’d be here?’ I asked him.

‘I wait here every day,’ he said, ‘to see if your father is coming.’

‘But you got a message from the Red Cross, didn’t you?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘They now say that he won’t be coming back, but I don’t believe it. You can never know for sure, can you?’

We crossed the square and walked to his house, which was only a minute or two away. I hadn’t seen my uncle in years and found him quite changed. He must have been in his fifties, but he shuffled wearily beside me like a person who no longer expects anything from life. His hair had turned white, his face was yellow, and his cheeks were hollow. Though he had always looked a lot like my father, I could no longer see a resemblance. He was not the jolly, carefree uncle he used to be. He paused in front of the door of his house.

‘Don’t mention any of this to your aunt,’ he said, bending closer to me. ‘She just doesn’t understand.’

He inserted the key in the lock. I followed him up the stairs to a small, gloomy room where my aunt was pouring tea. My uncle seated himself in an armchair by the window.

‘You can see the tram arrive from here,’ he said, ‘which is very convenient. There’s now a regular service to Utrecht again.’ He got up and shuffled out of the room.

‘Your uncle is ill,’ my aunt informed me. ‘Fortunately, he doesn’t know it, but he’s not ever going to get well. The news about the family really hit him hard.’

I nodded. I said that I could tell and that I found him quite changed.