Exits and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe

        Chapter One of Exits and Entrances by Dave Jaffe


    In early May 1942 a 26 year old woman named Lillian Bolloten Jaffe went into labour at a hospital in Oxford England. After hours of pain and effort a male baby came out of her womb. This was me and my parents named me David Joseph Jaffe. So I came into this world like billions of babies before me, a helpless blob of humanity.
     "Anatomy is destiny," Sigmund Freud once said. But I would change that to say, "Geography is destiny." At the time I was born great Britain was locked in a struggle for survival. Every day German Air Force planes scoured the British countryside bombing farms and factories. My father an intense working class native of East End London, owned a clothing factory that produced uniforms for the British army. World War Two was going full blast and every day thousands of people fought and died in Britain, Europe, Africa and Asia.
      My parents stayed in London throughout the war, and sent me to a series of homes and nurses far away from bomb-battered London. But some thing went wrong at one or two of the places I ended up at. "Dad had to take you away from a nurse you were staying with," my mother an upper middle class woman told me years later. I broke one of my legs while staying with one woman and my left leg never entirely healed from this accident. Also I was mistreated or abused along the way. This impacted my life in later years which I'll deal with later.
     In any case my first memory of my life happened on my third birthday May 3, 1945. This was not only my birthday. It was also Victory in Europe Day. Adolf Hitler's once mighty military machine lay in ruins and the Second World War at least in Europe was over. Nazi Germany had surrendered while the Japanese fought on in Asia.
     Still  British people and tens of millions of people who had lived under Nazi occupation for the past five years celebrated the Allied victory. My father took me downtown and the streets were packed with joyful people waving the Union Jack flag. "Are they celebrating my birthday?" I asked my father, who patiently explained why people were so happy. It was  the first let down in my life. In any case I was happy and returned to our house in Willesden in North London. At that time my family was firmly middle class. We had a cook and my sister Sylvia and I had a nanny too to look after us.
     From the outside everything looked good for my family. But trouble lurked around the corner. I soon became aware of this.