Jane Rocca | Sydney Morning Herald

My 92-year-old mother, Flora Klein, is my hero. She was sent to a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 14 and survived, but all the members of her family were wiped out – she saw her mother walk into a gas chamber. Despite the tragedy, she is a positive person who sees the goodness in people’s hearts. I wouldn’t be that forgiving if I had lived her life.

She raised me as a single mother in Israel – I was an only child. My father [Feri Witz] abandoned us when I was six. Mom had relatives living in America and so we relocated there for a better life when I was eight.

When we arrived in America neither of us could speak a word of English. My mother worked in a factory that was like a sweatshop – six days a week, no lunch breaks and there was no minimum wage. She was a button and buttonhole worker, handling 1000 coats a day. She made half a penny for every button sewed.

My father was her one true love. She went to Israel 25 times to visit him, even though he was a scoundrel who had remarried. I later found out that I had five half-brothers from my father’s five other marriages. He died in his early 80s and at that time he was living with a 35-year-old woman. He was who he was to the end.

I lost my virginity at 14 while delivering newspapers on a cold winter’s day in New York. I had to knock on doors and fight snow to get my three dollars for each delivery. An attractive and drunk housewife in her 20s asked me in. She went to get changed and came out in a negligée. You can imagine what happened next.