


When the engagement was broken off, she left South Africa for New York City. There she met and became engaged to American economist John Weber. In her early 20s she left Amsterdam for Johannesburg, where her stepsister lived. She spent the first years of her life in a Japanese-run internment camp. Hollander was born Xaviera "Vera" de Vries in Surabaya, Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies, which later became part of present-day Indonesia, to a Dutch Jewish physician father and a mother of French and German descent. She is best known for her best-selling memoir The Happy Hooker: My Own Story. Xaviera Hollander (born 15 June 1943) is a Dutch former call girl, madam and author. Soerabaia, Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies
