Holocaust survivor Faye Cukier remembers how tears ran down her English teacher's cheeks when she found out Adolf Hitler was in town.

"They were tears of enthusiasm. They all loved him. He was like a rock star," she says, huddling in a fur coat.

At the time, Ms Cukier was a teenager. Since she was one of the smartest girls around, she managed to get accepted into a German school in Cologne, even though she was a Jew.

"When I got home, the domestic help were also crying tears of excitement. It didn't matter what kind of person you were, whether an academic or a cleaner, they all adored Hitler."

She removes her coat, revealing her tiny stature to a group of teenage students from Verdala International School, who listen intently to her story.

Ms Cukier is now in her late 80s but her mischievous smile knocks off decades.

Her gritty American accent is the only thing that can be heard in the library room where she gives a talk, promoting her book Fleeing The Swastika, an autobiography about how her family survived the war.

Although it has been compared with the story of Anne Frank, German publishers initially refused to take it on because they felt it was not dramatic enough. But her tale is a stark reminder of the racially-rooted torture and massacre the Jews experienced during World War II at the hands of the German dictator.

What affected her most was the way her life changed so drastically, from living in relative luxury and being friendly with the Germans, to being taunted, stoned and hated by them.

"I wasn't even religious but I was born a Jew," she says, in an almost apologetic tone.

Her family was originally from Poland but when many of their friends decided to move to the US, her father chose to settle in Cologne after falling in love with the "gaiety" and "friendliness" of the historical city. Even though she was still very young, Ms Cukier remembers when everything changed. The Nazi government ordered a boycott and Jewish-owned shops were attacked and smeared with white paint spelling out the words "Jews are our misfortune".

"At three years old I realised I was different," she says, recalling being taunted by boys singing Nazi chants and chasing her around the house on a daily basis.

Eventually, the boys grow into young men.

"One day they started throwing stones at me, like in Biblical times. I didn't realise what was happening until blood started dripping on my white blouse."

When this was reported to the police, they shrugged their shoulders and said: "We cannot do anything. You have no human rights."

Her family fled to Belgium, on one of the last visitor's visas. But before they knew it, their visas expired and other countries were not willing to welcome them.

"It was suffocating. We couldn't go anywhere but we couldn't stay in Belgium legally. So we had to go in hiding."

With blonde hair and an Aryan-looking father, they were able to roam around the city every so often, though forever haunted by the fear of being caught.

One day, a man was discovered living in an apartment below her family's. He leapt from the window and was shot by the Nazi soldiers in mid-air.

She remembers the dire poverty her family lived in, at one point spending three weeks living on just chocolate and sardines.

Despite the hopeless situation, Ms Cukier's fluent English meant she was able to give lessons and earn enough money for her family to live a semi-decent life. She created her own "damn good" teaching method and quickly became renowned around the city, even though she was just 16.

"The things I missed most from Germany were my beautiful clothes. But now I was able to buy my clothes, pay for rent and give money to my whole family."

Ironically, she owed her perfect English to the same teacher who cried with glee when Adolf Hitler had entered Cologne.

So many years later, Ms Cukier still gets goose pimples when she recalls a woman in the streets screeching with glee that the Americans had arrived, two years after her family went into hiding.

While the scars remain, Ms Cukier lives peacefully in Philadelphia. Although her childhood was lost, she learnt things that are indispensible to her. These include an impressive range of languages and belly dancing, something she enjoys doing to this day.

"Sometimes tragedy turns into triumph," she concludes.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com