After Goebbels declared he would empty Berlin of Jews by Hitler’s birthday in April 1943, distinguished professors found themselves hiding in derelict beer halls or shabby brothels.

In 1943 Ian Buruma’s father, a university student, found himself in an already battered Berlin among thousands of forced labourers from Nazi-occupied countries, living in vermin-infested barracks as German confidence in victory began to waver. Because he was Dutch, so in the most “Aryan” and least despised category of foreign workers, he had a slightly better time than the Slavs. (He had, riskily, a Ukrainian girlfriend.) He was clever and spoke German, English and French, so he was given a clerical job in a factory and used as an interpreter. On account of Gestapo censorship, and sparing his parents, his letters home said little.

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