I think carefully before speaking. He might be different, but the rest of his kind are to be feared.

‘We’ve suffered. Us Germans, I mean. Ever since the punishment of Versailles. So much poverty and hardship as a result.’

‘You say “us Germans”,’ Walter says, plucking a head of wheat and pulling it apart, dropping the pieces at his feet as he walks. ‘Can’t you see that I’m German too? That is all I am. I’m more German, even, than you!’

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

‘You have a French mother. My family have lived in Germany for generations. I’ve always been proud to be German. My father was decorated with the Iron Cross for his bravery in the war, fighting for Germany. And how has he been repaid? By being stripped of his citizenship and his livelihood! We are aliens in our own country.’ His eyes are wide and he waves his hands with passion. He frowns and taps his temple. ‘Remind me, I forget – was your father decorated for bravery in the war?’

‘No. He was brave, though, but he was overlooked for a medal. It was a travesty.’

‘Really? Well, he’s doing all right now, isn’t he? We, on the other hand, have seen our business destroyed, our lives turned upside down. Just imagine, for a moment, how that is, will you? Imagine how your country wants to be rid of you. A devoted German citizen, yet you have nowhere else to go.’

Satan is clever and has a way with words. Do not believe all that the devil seeks to tell you.

‘What do you mean, stripped of your citizenship and livelihood? You’re not making sense.’ I imagine what Vati would say if he was listening to this.

Walter takes a deep breath. ‘They have taken away our passports, Hetty. If we want to leave the country, we must pay something called an exit tax.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Essentially, it’s an exorbitant amount of money we would have to pay the Government. We’d have to give them everything we own.’ Walter speaks slowly, patiently, as though I am a small child. ‘Our house, our valuables. They tax our business on its value back in 1930 when it was worth ten, twenty times what it is now. Being a Jewish business means banks, if they lend to us at all, charge us interest rates five times higher than any other business. And nobody will buy from us, other than a few loyal customers, mostly foreign ones. They have strangled us almost into bankruptcy. It’s simply sheer determination not to be beaten that has kept my uncle and my father going these last few years.’

‘I think you are taking it all too personally,’ I find myself saying. ‘The Nazis have rescued the nation. I think you’ve forgotten the dire state we were all in after the war. You can hardly blame the Party when it was the Jews who were behind the shocking terms of the peace treaty which resulted in all our suffering—’