De Waal returns to Vienna and the Palais Ephrussi, feeling that he can no longer write about the events without being there. With a netsuke in his pocket, he stands on the second floor and imagines Emmy’s dressing table crashing to the floor below.

The Gestapo officers ransacked the Palais, claiming that they were searching for evidence that Viktor supported the former Chancellor, Schuschnigg. In addition, they demanded the keys to his safe and the bank. Viktor was accused of donating money to Schuschnigg’s campaign, and he and Rudolf were arrested. De Waal does not know where Viktor and Rudolf were taken, as there are no records of the event. Jews were taken, beaten, and detained in many locations across Vienna.

Viktor and Rudolf were detained for three days and finally released when Viktor signed over his ownership of the Palais and all other property. The family lived in two rooms of the Palais while the house was stripped of its contents and divided into offices of the Reich. The ballroom became the office of Alfred Rosenberg, a government officer responsible for Nazi indoctrination. Under the Reich’s new legislation, Jewish businesses were offered to Aryan shareholders at a discount. Consequently, Victor’s co-owner took over his portion of Ephrussi and Co.

Visiting Vienna’s Jewish archives, de Waal finds Viktor’s marriage record. He cries when he sees the name “Israel” stamped over Viktor’s first name. Nazi legislation forced all Jewish men to be renamed Israel and all Jewish women to take the name Sara.

Rudolf was permitted to emigrate to the US when he secured a job at an Arkansas cotton company. Once he had gone, only Victor, Emmy, and their servant Anna remained at the Palais. Outside, their movements were restricted as Jews were forbidden from visiting cafes, clubs, theaters, and even sitting on park benches. Risking her own safety, Elisabeth briefly returned to Vienna and organized permits for her parents to leave Austria. In return, they were stripped of any remaining assets and their Austrian citizenship. On May 21, 1938, Viktor and Emmy crossed the Czech border and took refuge at Kövesces. However, in September, the Munich Accord granted Germany jurisdiction over some regions of Czechoslovakia, and the Republic of Czechoslovakia became Slovakia. In October, at age 59, Emmy died from an overdose of heart pills. Seventy-eight-year-old Viktor was stranded in Slovakia with an invalid Austrian passport.

In March 1939, Elisabeth secured her father a visa for a single journey to England. She and her sons left Switzerland to meet Viktor in Tunbridge Wells when he arrived, carrying only one suitcase.

On November 7, 1939, a young Jewish man in Paris assassinated a German diplomat, Ernst von Rath. Devastating recriminations for the Jewish people followed. During Kristallnacht, a state-approved riot across Nazi Germany, Jewish property was destroyed, and Jewish people were attacked. It is estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 Jews died, many by suicide.

Viktor lived with Elisabeth, Henk, and their children in Tunbridge Wells until he died in March 1945, just before the Nazi regime surrendered and Vienna was liberated. After the war, Elisabeth learned that Emmy’s sister Eva had died in a Jewish concentration camp.

In December 1945, Elisabeth visited Vienna to retrieve any property left in the Palais Ephrussi. The Palais had become the headquarters of the occupying US forces, and only a handful of portraits remained. In Emmy’s dressing-room, the vitrine stood empty. A US lieutenant told Elisabeth that Anna, their former maid, still lived in the building.

Anna explained to Elizabeth that, after Viktor and Emmy left, she was forced to help pack the family’s belongings into crates. Since the netsuke were small enough to conceal, she placed a few of them in her apron pocket every day and then hid them inside her mattress. Anna returned all 264 of the netsuke to Elisabeth, who took them back to England.

On his third visit to Vienna, de Waal sees the “secret floor” where the Ephrussi family’s servants slept. A hidden door conceals the stairs to this floor. The author’s search for a record of what happened to Anna is unsuccessful, yielding only unrelated information. He learns that Louise Cahen d’Anvers’s house was used as a Nazi detention camp during the war and that one of her daughters, whom Renoir painted, died in Auschwitz.

After the war, only 4,500 of Austria’s 185,000 Jews returned to the new Austrian Republic. A total of 65,459 had been killed. Elisabeth fought to retrieve her family’s property and, in 1950, the war-damaged Palais was finally returned to the family, but its sale yielded just $30,000. In addition, the Ephrussis received approximately $5,000 for Viktor’s share of the bank. Only a few of their possessions were traced and returned.

After serving in the war as a US intelligence officer, Iggie began working for an international grain exporter. Offered the choice of a post in Japan or in the Congo, he decided to take the netsuke back to the country where they were made.