Max trained harder than any of the other boys. He ran faster, pulled more fiercely, cheered on his teammates louder. Soon, he was one of the first to be picked for a team. He was the one slapped on the back the most times at the end of the races. He could barely recall the days when he had been forgotten, picked last, teased for being weak.

He always went home bursting with so much pleasure he sometimes thought he might pop like an overfilled balloon.

It was on a day like this that something happened to put a tiny dint in Max’s bubble.

He and his friends were marching home from the park. They had been dismissed for the day so they didn’t have to march, but they did anyway because they enjoyed it.

They marched down the road four abreast, almost taking over the whole width of the pavement.

A man coming towards them had to dodge out of their way. As he hopped off the pavement, one of the boys called out, ‘Smelly Jew!’ Another held a hand out in front of his face, pretending to extend his nose out into a huge hook shape.

The other boys laughed. Max forced himself to laugh, too. Inside, though, he got an uncomfortable wriggly feeling. Saying horrible things about Jews was the only thing he didn’t really like about his new life.

And the things they said – Max still wasn’t convinced they were even true. His best friends had been Jewish – but they didn’t have huge noses and they didn’t smell.

So Max did what he always did in these situations. He forced his mind through the mental hoops he had constructed over the time they had lived in Munich. He told himself that if Leo and Elsa weren’t stinky and didn’t have big noses and weren’t nasty and evil, that meant they couldn’t really be Jewish. Maybe they had mistakenly believed they were. Maybe Max had thought they had told him they were Jewish but actually he’d got it wrong and they were something else altogether.

Before long, Max had convinced himself Leo and Elsa weren’t Jewish at all. They couldn’t have been. And if they weren’t Jewish then Max didn’t have a problem.

If they weren’t Jewish then he didn’t need to question himself every time someone said something about the Jews. If they weren’t Jewish, maybe he could even write to them, rekindle their friendship, tell them all about his new life and the Hitler Youth. They would be pleased to know he was so happy.

That night at dinner Max took all his courage in his hands, cleared his throat and in the most polite voice he could muster said, ‘Father, could I ask you a question, please?’

His father finished chewing, swallowed his mouthful and replied, ‘Of course.’