In the first year of High School you also got separated from many of your former classmates, as the classes got scrambled. As I remember it you could name two friends you wanted to stay together with, but unless you had a complicated system, too sophisticated for our age, a lot of circles of friends got broken up Anyway, this is why I met my later best friend, Eva David (who used to be in a parallel class), - a friendship that lasted a lifetime- only in fifth grade. Her brother Theo became my first boy friend. Strangely enough my father had known them by sight for a long time from our Sunday walks (“Spaziergang”): I remember that he was impressed by the “knickerbockers” ( pump (?) trousers that went below the knee ) Mr. David wore, and the uniformed nurse maid that took Eva to school. The father was a banker, and they lived in a semi-detached Villa with a garden and had a car and a chauffeur, hence were much better off than we were
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[After Hitler's election in 1933] My best friend, Eva David and her brother Theo (see above) were sent to a boarding school in Switzerland almost immediately. [1]
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If we had a visitor the visitor was allowed to take us out of school for the day; I remember two such occasions. The first was Eva David and her mother; they lived in London at the time and I had looked forward to be able to see them ever so often, but that was not in the cards: the father , who had a small private bank in Berlin, went to Tel Aviv early in 1933 when it was still possible to export money from Germany; the children, Eva and Theo (13 and 15) were sent to a boarding school in Switzerland. I think the mother, not Jewish but an orphan reared by Jews, stayed in Berlin for a while. But the father’s business went bankrupt and everyone had to join him in T-A. Theo did not go to college but joined his father in some business endeavour, Eva hated to be at home and got married at 18 to a boy aged 19; shortly afterwards they both joined the army and were sent to different places; Eva was stationed in Egypt. When they were reunited several years later they discovered that they had nothing in common any more and divorced. I remember from the photos that he was a nice-looking boy whose birthday was the same day as mine (one year older). Eva got a British Commonwealth scholarship for people who lived in the “colonies” and that brought her to London for two years to the London School of Economics to study Social Work; and I believe she became a successful and dedicated social worker; she never remarried. During the two years she spent in London she was a very frequent visitor at our house in Manchester and I went to visit her in London ever so often too. We spent summer vacations together and one of the two summers Theo joined us.
Notes:
[1] Mom's diary from April 1934 shows how she was already misssing Eva. Also, note that a letter from Eva is among those she collected in her classmate search.