When the Reichstag was on fire, that was also a very strange day, the 27th of February. I do remember the date, because it was my auntie’s birthday, who lived at the other side of town, of Berlin, not very far from the Reichstag actually. We were there, well, this was sort of the custom of the Germans – big afternoon tea, coffee and cake. And we were going to my auntie, I think it was a weekday, it was the 27th of February 1934, I think. Was it ’34 or ’33? Anyway, we were there, sitting with my aunties, and she had one or two friends there, having coffee and talking and putting in the presents and whatever, when we heard, all of a sudden, an awful lot of fire-engines. So, my father said, ‘That is something big, that is something big going on’. Then he put the radio on. And they said, ‘The Reichstag is on fire.’ So my father said right away, ‘We go home.’ We stopped, we went home immediately. We went on a tram, there were no buses, on the tram. We went home immediately. And then, of course, they blamed this Jewish fellow for doing it and then things really started. That really was the beginning of the end then.
