1933-39: On November 10, 1938, hoodlums threw rocks and broke all the windows of our home. That same day police arrested my father and grandfather. My mother, my grandmother and I managed to hide in a shed until it was quiet. When we came out, the town's Jewish men had been taken to the Dachau concentration camp. My father and grandfather were allowed to return home a few weeks later, but that May my grandfather died of a heart attack.

1940-45: When I was 7, I was deported with my parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. When we arrived, everything was taken from us, except for the clothes we wore and my doll, Marlene. Conditions in the camp were harsh. Potatoes were as valuable as diamonds. I was hungry, scared and sick most of the time. For my eighth birthday, my parents gave me a tiny potato cake with a hint of sugar; for my ninth birthday, an outfit sewn from rags for my doll; and for my tenth birthday, a poem written by my mother.

On May 8, 1945, Inge and her parents were liberated from the Theresienstadt ghetto where they had spent nearly three years. They emigrated to the United States in May 1946.

1933-39: After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, my father was found dead, a probable suicide. In May 1939, four months before war broke out, my mother booked passage on the St. Louis, a ship bound for Cuba. But Cuban authorities turned the ship back. Along with some other refugees from the ship, my mother and brother and I disembarked in the French city of Boulogne, and were then sent south to Loudun.

1940-44: The Germans invaded France. We soon boarded a train for Limoges, which had not been taken by the Germans. At first we were housed in a stadium used for circus performances, where we slept on the rows of stone bleachers. We had hardly any food; during the course of a day my meals consisted of a little milk, boiled brown lentils, and day-old bread. Occasionally there were potatoes, or an egg. On my sixth birthday my mother brought me the nicest present I'd ever had--a peach and some dried fruit.

In 1941 the Reifs settled in New York, after relatives helped them arrange passage to the United States via Portugal. Liane later earned a doctorate in chemistry.