Born in Berlin in 1913, Eleanor Alexander (née Eyck) was educated at the Auguste Viktoria Realgymnasium. After earning the Abitur in 1932, she attended medical schools in Berlin and Heidelberg before leaving Germany for Paris in the spring of 1933. The following year she went to London as an au pair and eventually found a job teaching at a girls school. Her stay in Rolandia, Brazil - the focus of this eyewitness account - lasted from the spring of 1936 to the spring of 1937. From there she left for Cambridge, Massachusetts, to marry Paul Alexander. The couple spent the war years in Washington, D.C., where two of their three children were born. The third child was born in Geneva, New York, where Professor Alexander was teaching at Hobart College. Later, he taught at Brandeis, Michigan, and Berkeley. He died in 1977. Eleanor Alexander returned to school in 1961, earning a B.A. (1963) and an M.A. in French literature (1967) at Michigan. After teaching at the University of California Extension in Berkeley from 1968 to 1983, she turned to writing book reviews and essays on French and German literature. Her memoirs, Stories of My Life, were published in 1986. She currently lives in Berkeley, California. This report was written in 1992.