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Overview
Judith Berger grew up in a well-to-do Jewish family in Vienna in the 1930s. Her best friend, Anton Kermauner, was handsome and charming. It did not matter to him that Judith was Jewish, nor did it matter to Judith that he was not.But Vienna changed as Adolf Hitler rose to power, and the fates of these two young sweethearts were controlled by events that shook the world. Judith lost her home and her parents. Anton joined the Hitler Youth and lost his soul. Judith fled Austria and grew up in Ireland and the United States. Anton grew up all too quickly as a Nazi soldier at Auschwitz.
Now the war is over, and Judith is a young woman. She decides to take an important trip - back to Vienna, the city of her childhood, the home of her childhood friends and what's left of her family. She hopes to enter the university there and resume the life she thought she wanted. But will she find the Vienna she remembers? What will she think of Anton when she sees him again? And how will Anton feel about her?