My parents were married in Warsaw on April 2, 1938. My father, who was in Vienna when the Nazis arrived, knew what was coming and was determined to leave Europe. His father-in-law, a prosperous businessman, persuaded himself that “things would blow over” and, besides, he and his wife did not want to see their youngest daughter leave. My father and his new in-laws argued for months, their arguments made more intense by the fact that there were few countries willing to admit Central and Eastern European Jews at the time. (The U.S. had strict quotas.) Eventually they settled on Cuba, which they saw as way-station on the road to the United States. They set sail from Gdynia, Poland (a Baltic port city adjacent to Gdansk) in November 1938. The first leg of their journey took them to France, a journey they had to make by sea in order to avoid passing through Nazi Germany. My mother’s parents and many other relatives stayed behind and were murdered by the Nazis.