Heading home too late one evening, he saw a German soldier approaching. "He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others - the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers," he recalled, in the autobiographical statement required of him by the Nobel Committee. "As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting."
Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Context for the excerpt: The year was late 1941, or early 1942. The place was Nazi occupied France. Danny Kahneman was seven-years old and Jewish.
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