Posted on November 14, 2018
Gert Berliner, 94, tied the little stuffed monkey to his bicycle when he was a child in Berlin. Claire Harbage/NPR
The monkey’s fur is worn away. It’s nearly a century old. A well-loved toy, it is barely 4 inches tall. It was packed away for long voyages, on an escape from Nazi Germany, to Sweden and America. And now, it’s the key to a discovery that transformed my family.
“I liked him,” recalls my dad, who is now 94. “He was like a good luck piece.”