Growing up with Hitler: Stanford prof writes memoir

"He was often in our apartment complex because our upstairs neighbor was one of his informants," she said.

In one instance, she was riding her bike in a narrow traffic circle when she found herself next to Hitler's convertible -- and only a few feet from the leader of the Nazi party himself -- with a second car full of guards screaming at her, "Greet your Führer!"

These experiences coupled with an intriguing life lend an interesting perspective to Korner-Kalman's autobiographical book, "Across the Street From Adolf Hitler: A Memoir." The memoir follows the arc of her life from her childhood in Munich to the 83-year-old's current residence in Palo Alto, where she lives with her husband, Kal.

As a professor emeritus at Stanford University and a member of the psychology department, Korner-Kalman focused her research on newborn behavior.

Though "Across the Street From Adolf Hitler" is not her first book, it's a departure from her three previous titles and the more than 200 articles published for the scientific community.

Noting that in science writing the emphasis is on being concise, Korner-Kalman appropriately changed her style for her memoir, written for the general reader. "What I had to do in a book like this was to be more expansive, and that was a real learning process for me," she said.

In Germany, she witnessed the rising tide of anti-Semitism, and her book describes how, little by little, her life changed. "We lost our homeopathic pediatrician who, until then, had made house calls whenever I was sick. He usually came on his motorcycle equipped with a red cross emblem," she writes. "This bearded, gray-haired man in his sixties had turned Nazi and no longer treated Jewish children."

Korner-Kalman was fortunate to escape from Germany in 1936, after an interrogation by the Gestapo. With restrictions against the Jews increasing, her frightened parents took it as a sign that the worst was yet to come, and decided to send their daughter out of the country to school, to safety.

At the Institut Jean Jacques Rousseau in Switzerland, she studied psychology with Jean Piaget, the pioneering child psychologist. Later, she immigrated to the United States and completed her doctorate at Columbia University.

"Piaget and Erik Erikson, of course, were studying [child] development and so was Anna Freud, and they all had an influence on me," she said. "I presented a case to Anna Freud on an occasion, and Erikson was my teacher at the psychoanalytic institute for three years. "

After studying in New York and then practicing in Chicago, Korner-Kalman took a road-trip to the West with a friend and fell in love with San Francisco.

She was hired as chief psychologist at the Mount Zion Psychiatric Clinic. Later, as a professor at Stanford, she began researching the behavioral development of children through studies of premature infants.

"What I wanted to do," she said, "was to find out how it all starts." At that time, her concept that a child's temperament was a mixture of genetics and environment ran counter to the scientific community's belief that the parents, often the mother, were responsible for all defects in children.

"I don't care one way or another whether I'm an outsider, I never went where the money was," she explained.

Her dare-to-be-different philosophy at work also applied to her religious beliefs. "While I'm not a religious Jew," she said, "I do have a religion and that's egalitarianism."

Her memoir reflects upon the causes and complexities of hate in the Holocaust, which became apparent after Korner-Kalman made a return trip to Germany in 1983. The book also touches upon the theme of hatred that German Jews felt toward their Eastern-European counterparts. "In my mother's eyes if you were born east of Vienna, you were an Eastern-European Jew, and all these Jews were considered crooks, even by other Jews."

Korner-Kalman's life experiences have created a unique Jewish identity. "In Germany, when I grew up, most Jews were assimilated Jews. I have never been a practicing Jew; but I have a very strong Jewish identity."