Joachim Israel was born in Germany in 1920 and spent his teenage years in Nazi Germany, planning to move to Palestine as soon as possible. In 1938 he was allowed to go to Sweden with an agricultural work permit. By 1946 he was able to publish his first book in the field in which he was studyingchild therapy. He went on to get his doctorate in Stockholm and subsequently had a luminous academic career in Uppsala, Copenhagen, Lund, and as an emeritus professor in Halmstad. After a 1962 visit to Israel he abandoned plans to settle there and returned to live permanently in Sweden. The following excerpt describing his move from Nazi Germany to neutral Sweden is drawn from his book of memoirs, which offers a panoramic overview of the Swedish academic and political world of the postwar period. He died in the fall of 2001.