“I was pulled out from under the rubble as a baby by my grandmother,” spoke a woman from the neighbourhood who had come to lunch at Plan Einstein Pahud.

She was talking with friends and azc-residents about how you can be lucky and unlucky with where you are born, about war and what the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria had done. And so she came upon her own history. Someone asked where her parents were then. “They were killed by those bombings.”

In fact, she was born during World War II in Rotterdam, the city that was largely bombed to pieces. It gave her a difficult childhood. She grew up in children’s homes and foster homes where she was mistreated. At 14, she took matters into her own hands and ran away. Eventually, she was taken in by a woman with whom she could work for board and lodging. The woman also financed education for her. “And after that, I worked in nursing for 40 years,” she concluded her story. “With great satisfaction.”

Loss, grief, bearing and happiness are part of everyone’s life – to many degrees. Before, now, later. That help and support from others can make THE big difference for someone in that regard, again shows this story told in Pahud’s Living Room in “just like that” a conversation between neighbours and asylum seekers. Let this happen more often, it is so important.