At the mercy of strangers

Memoirs of Loebl, a Jew born to the Bamberger family in Hanover, Germany, in 1925. She fled with her parents and sister to Brussels in 1938. Her father was arrested as an alien and sent to France, where he was interned; he obtained a visa and reached the USA. Describes the relatively slow nazification in Belgium, due in part to General von Falkenhausen, the military commander who was arrested and sent to Dachau in 1944 for being soft on the Jews. In addition, after initially complying with the Nazi order to register their Jews, Belgian authorities resisted this role. Avoiding registration, Loebl, her mother, and sister survived the war with false identification papers and the help of a number of non-Jews who sheltered them separately. Loebl worked for her keep, with one employer being so nasty that her real name is not mentioned. Notes that the resistance was strong in Brussels, but not in the antisemitic Flemish part of the country. Cites from her emotion-filled diary, including letters never sent to her secret beloved, who died a resistance martyr. Loebl regrets never having joined the resistance. After the war, the three females in the family rejoined the paterfamilias in New York.