'Hermina' was my cherished friend and companion in the large tenement flat on the old West Side of Chicago. The flat, in a building that no longer exists, was managed by my great-aunt and was where I spent the first five years of my childhood with my parents who were unable to afford a home for several years following World War 2. Hermina had emigrated from a small town in Eastern Europe and I have imagined her in the setting of her home there before the Nazi onslaught.