Edgar Feuchtwanger was a small boy when he watched his neighbor — Adolf Hitler — rise to power in Germany. On Thursday, the 88-year-old’s first memoir, co-written in French with journalist Bertil Scali, hit bookstore shelves in France.

“I always stop by this building, and I observe carefully,” Feuchtwanger writes in the book, “Hitler, My Neighbor: Memories of a Jewish Child.”

“I imagine what Hitler’s life must be like. I wonder what he eats for breakfast in the morning. I see his shadow at the window. He hates us. He hates me, without even knowing that I exist.”