A.P. left it to Jeremy to put her in the picture.

‘The repercussions of Hess’s suicide were alarming for us,’ she said when he finished speaking.

‘For us, too.’

‘But for German Jewry there is of course an added dimension,’ said the boy who had brought the coffee. ‘My name, in case you did not catch it when Howard introduced us, is Karl. Howard is my boss, did he tell you? I work for the Schulmann Optics Company at their Munich office. My father also, and he has made friends with Howard. Our community is not as large as those in Frankfurt and Berlin—’

‘But you seem to keep active,’ Jeremy cut in.

‘If I did not have this place to come to, until I emigrate to Israel, I do not know how I could go on living in Germany,’ said the sloe-eyed girl. ‘That is how many of us feel. And for me it is even worse. Since my parents, they are not of German origin, their family was Turkish, they are not among those who returned, as Karl’s family did.’

‘My grandmother could not take the climate or the insects in Israel,’ Karl said apologetically to Jeremy and A.P. ‘It was where she and my grandfather intended to stay, when they settled there after the camps. Both had survived Dachau—’

‘And how they can bear living now so close to it I fail to understand,’ said Helga.

‘Would you expect when they returned to Germany they would not choose the city where they grew up?’ Karl flashed, his tone now defensive rather than apologetic.

Do they have this sort of contretemps all the time? Jeremy wondered. If so, he was sorry for his German Jewish counterparts. What a complex situation theirs was.

He listened to the ensuing list of reasons which accounted for those at the table with him and A.P. having been born where they would rather not have been born. The latter was more than plain, though some seemed to feel constrained to defend their families and others to bitterly blame them.

The girl who had said she was of Turkish origin was among those who held no brief for their parents being here.

‘I said that for me it is worse and I shall tell you why,’ she capped the conversation for the visitors’ benefit, her mature bosom heaving with emotion under a white sweater that made it the more eye-catching. ‘My parents came to Germany only for business reasons. Money is all that my father is concerned with. Karl, like some others at this table, comes here often with his family. My family does not wish to be part of the Jewish community and I am ashamed of them. My brother is no different from Helga’s sister. They are as it happens dating each other and would make a fine couple!