The political atmosphere was heating up. In Germany, Hitler blared his message of the super race and of hatred for the Jews into Aryan ears. In Italy… - Nina Graboi

Rereading these pages, I am struck with a sense of unfamiliarity with the feelings I then harbored. Here was a woman not yet forty who believed her life to be over because her children had grown! Did I really experience these sentiments? It seems so alien to me now; again, I am reminded of how little of what I call myself is permanent. (Chapter Twenty)

If all the Jews were like you, there wouldn't be any anti-semitism," she said fondly. From then on, I was to hear these words frequently. They were meant to reassure the "exceptional" Jew to whom they were addressed, but were in fact expressions of a virulent kind of anti-semitism that was willing to make exceptions without denying the validity of Hitlerian racism. (Chapter Four)

for me, my sensuous body was a liability-it seemed to attract the wrong men for the wrong reasons. (Chapter Three)