Book Review: The Woman with the Blue Star

Synopsis:

It’s 1942, World War II is raging, and eighteen-year-old Sadie Gault lives with her parents in the Kraków Ghetto. But when the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie, her father, and pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous tunnels beneath the city.

One day, Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers. Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease, although her father has been killed in the war. Her stepmother has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. While on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a grate in the street, and upon closer inspection, is startled to realize she is looking at a girl hiding there.

Ella begins to aid Sadie and the two form a close friendship. But as the dangers of the war worsen, their lives are on a collision course that will test their strength and resolve.

The Woman with the Blue Star was inspired by unbelievable true stories of survival, and is a testament to the power of friendship, courage despite extraordinary odds, and the strength of the human will to survive.

Review:

Pam Jenoff is the bestselling author of The Orphan’s Tale, The Lost Girls of Paris, and eight other books of historical fiction. Born in Maryland and raised outside Philadelphia, she studied at George Washington University and Cambridge University, where she earned a master’s degree in history. Serving as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army, she had a unique view of and opportunity to participate in the operations of the most senior levels of the U.S. government. She also worked at the State Department, and in 1996 was assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Krakow, Poland, where she developed expertise in Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust and established close relationships with the surviving Jewish community. In 1998 she enrolled in law school at the University of Pennsylvania and, after graduating, spent several years working as a labor and employment attorney. Today she is a professor of law at Rutgers University.

Jenoff says that The Woman with the Blue Star emanates from her “love and reverence for the people who lived through the Holocaust, born out of the years I spent in Eastern Europe working on Holocaust issues.” She was inspired to write the book when she discovered the unimaginable true story of a group of Jewish citizens who hid for many months from the Nazis by living in the sewers of Lviv, Poland. She relates, “When I find a story that makes me still gasp, I’m hopeful that others will feel the same.” She was taken by a “particularly moving story where a young girl in the sewer had looked up through the grate and seen a young girl buying flowers. When she remarked on the disparity between the girl on the street and herself, her mother said, ‘Someday there will be flowers.’ I was struck by the horrific circumstances which they endured, as well as their ingenuity and resilience in surviving there.”

Find the things that give you hope and cling to them. That is the only way we will make it through this war. ~~ Mama

Jenoff wondered what would happen if “the girl above and the girl below had the chance to meet and become friends.” The result is The Woman with the Blue Star, a thoroughly engrossing, beautifully written, and deeply moving tale of two young women, roughly the same age, who find themselves existing in starkly contrasting circumstances in the same city at the same time in history. Their first encounter impacts both of them profoundly and they develop a most unlikely and dangerous friendship.

The book opens in Krakow in 2016. Via a first-person narrative, a woman in her early seventies explains that she has traveled to Poland from America in search of a woman around ninety years of age. She watches as the older woman takes her usual seat at a table in a cafe, trying to summon the courage to approach her. When she does, she says that “the woman I see before me is not the one I expected at all.” The identities of the two women, and the reason why the younger of the two has traveled so far to speak to the older one is an intriguing mystery with which Jenoff deftly pulls readers into the story immediately.

The action then turns back to Krakow in March 1942. “Everything changed the day they came for the children,” Sadie relates in her first-person narrative. She describes the day the Nazis raided the three-story building in the ghetto in which she and her parents have been forced to take up residence with a dozen other families. While her parents labor during the day — her father was an accountant before the war — Sadie is supposed to remain hidden in the attic crawl space. But, cold and restless, the days stretched on endlessly in a place where she could not stand up and did not have enough light to read her beloved books. So when she grew hungry, she dared venture downstairs to the kitchen in search of crumbs and a glass of water, and remained there for a few minutes reading The Count of Monte Cristo. When she hears tires screech and loud voices outside, she knows she has stayed too long. The Nazis have commenced an “aktion” — a sudden unannounced arrest of large groups of Jews to be taken from the ghetto to the concentration camps. “The very reason I was meant to be hiding in the first place.” With insufficient time to make her way back to the attic, Sadie hides in the place she was shown by her mother, listening as the soldiers yell, “Kinder, raus!” (“Children, out.”) “It was not the first time the Germans had come for children during the day, knowing that their parents would be at work.” Eventually, there is silence until the laborers return to find their children gone.

Jenoff offers yet another first-person narrative from Ella that commences in June 1942. She is heartbroken because Krys, the young man she loves, refused to become engaged before going off to fight. Ella’s mother died of influenza when she was just a toddler and her two older sisters have married and moved away. Her older brother, Maciej, is living in Paris with his partner, Phillipe. Ella has been left to reside in the family home with her stepmother, Ana Lucia. Her father, Tata, insisted upon renewing his army commission when the war started, and was declared missing and presumed dead shortly after leaving. Now, Ella spends the evenings listening to Ana Lucia entertaining Nazi soldiers, “the higher ranking, the better,” having decided to convert the Polish people’s captors into friends in order to protect herself. Because Tata died without a will, Ana Lucia has inherited the beautiful home and all of his money, leaving Bella at her mercy. “When you are young, you expect the family you were born into to be yours forever. Time and war had made that not the case.”

And then in March 1943, with Sadie’s forty-year-old mother expecting a baby in late summer, the Nazis commence another “aktion.” She observes that the toilet in the apartment building has been lifted from the floor, revealing a hole in the ground, and her father is frantically chopping the concrete edges to make the hole bigger. As everyone in the ghetto is being rounded up and gunfire erupts, she is horrified when her father directs her to climb through the hole, down into a dark, ominous, foul-smelling void. When she hesitates, her father shoves her and she lands on her knees. She is shocked to see that others are already there. “I took a breath and started to gag. The smell was everywhere. It was the stench of water filled with feces and urine, as well as garbage and decay that thickened the air. ‘Breathe through you mouth,’ Mama instructed quietly. ‘Shallow breaths.'” Soon a stranger leads them on a perilous, tragic journey through tunnels under the city, eventually delivering them to the place where Sadie would remain for months.

I glimpsed on my sleeve the armband with the blue star that the Germans had made us wear to identify ourselves as Jews. “At least we don’t need this anymore.” I tugged at the armband and the fabric tore with a satisfying rip. ~~ Sadie

The Woman with the Blue Star begins with suspense, quickly segueing into a fast-paced, heart-stopping tale about people forced to endure horrific conditions in order to stay alive. It is not an easy book to read, because Jenoff compassionately, but candidly, details the hardships that Sadie and the others suffer and the dangers they encounter. When Sadie’s father tells her she must go through the hole in the floor to the sewer below, she believes that she is making her way to a safe place, consoling herself with the belief that the trip is a means to an end. “Instead, it was the destination itself. For all of my wildest nightmares, I could not have imagined that we would be staying in the sewer.” There is no escape, with Nazis patrolling the streets of Krakow and shooting Jews on sight, and blockades preventing escape. Ironically, they are stowed away within a maze of pipes and passageways . . . none of which lead to freedom. “Death hung like a scepter above, waiting for all of us if we were captured. We didn’t want to be trapped underground — yet everything hung on our making it work.” The need to remain hidden and quiet causes increasing consternation as the days pass, the meager food supply further diminishes, the sounds coming from above grow increasingly ominous, and her mother’s pregnancy progresses. How will they be able to care for an infant, much less keep a baby from crying and bringing unwanted attention to them?

Because none of them can leave, their survival is completely dependent upon the assistance of those who dare venture into the sewer to bring them food. Jenoff says that she was “moved by the selflessness of those who helped them, most notably a sewer worker,. . .” Indeed, in the book, it is a sewer worker, Pawel, who risks his own life in order to deliver the needed sustenance to Sadie and the others. Before the war, he was a thief in order to feed his wife and child. Because Sadie’s father showed him kindness, he decides that saving Sadie and the others “is my life’s work.” It becomes his chance for salvation.

I found in the process of writing this book that themes emerged of coping with isolation and an uncertain future, which were more relevant to our current world situation than I ever could have imagined. ~~ Author Pam Jenoff

The relationship between Sadie and Ella is not the only friendship that Jenoff explores. Among those sheltering in the sewer is a family of observant Jews. Saul and his family escaped to Krakow from a small village, believing that conditions would be better there. His older brother, Micah, a rabbi, stayed behind and was forced into a small ghetto. Saul’s fiancee, Shifra, refused to flee with him, remaining behind to care for her sick mother and family. As time passes, and Saul’s hope of seeing Micah or Shifra again dims, Saul and Sadie grow close, sneaking away to another part of the sewer at night that provides more light in order to read and talk, eventually developing feelings for each other. But if they manage to escape the sewer when the war ends, will their relationship endure?

Jenoff says writing the book proved to be a very powerful experience. She penned it in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, so “I was writing about isolation while we were in isolation.” The story resonated with her — and will with readers, as well — in part because it is an exploration of the need for human connection created during a period of time when readers have themselves been separated from their family and friends.

The Woman with the Blue Star is a haunting, poignant, and gut-wrenching epic about the resilience of the human spirit and the indomitable will to live that was displayed by so many during World War II. Sadie is a determined young woman whose parents instilled in her a love of learning and encouraged her dream of studying medicine. She will do whatever is necessary to protect her mother, unborn sibling, and those with whom she hides, believing that Krakow will be liberated and they will be freed any day. Although Ella lost her mother at a very young age, she was a stranger to adversity even during the early days of war. “Sequestered in my world of privilege and protection, I didn’t often see the hardships that the ordinary people were facing during the war.” But even before she catches her first glimpse of Sadie, she gradually realizes that war is taking its toll on the city she loves and its people, noticing, for the first time, the lack of food, the destruction, the fear, and the Germans’ brutality, even as Ana Lucia welcomes it into their home. Once she does see Sadie, she is changed forever. She is at first wary. “Keep your head low, that was the lesson I had learned from the war. . . . Stay out of everyone’s way and you might have a chance of coming out on the other side.” Ellla knows that if she begins helping Sadie, she will somehow become responsible for her. But she is unable to turn away from the girl in the sewer and resolves to do whatever it takes to help her, proving herself braver than she ever knew she could be.

The Woman with the Blue Star is a mesmerizing, towering work of historical fiction that should be read by every fan of the genre. Jenoff meticulously and believably creates the world in which Sadie and the others are forced to abide, as well as the world above — a city under siege. Her characters are endearing and sympathetic, their plights intriguing and gut-wrenching, and their friendship unforgettable and inspiring. She says that the message she hopes readers will take from the story is that it is possible for people to transcend their differences and connect with each other. Indeed, despite all of the heartbreak, loss, and adversity depicted in the story, Jenoff has artfully crafted a story that is ultimately uplifting and hopeful. The book is an outstanding choice for book clubs because of the themes and plot twists that lend themselves to discussion.

Excerpt from The Woman with the Blue Star

Prologue

Kraków, Poland
June 2016

The woman I see before me is not the one I expected at all.

Ten minutes earlier, I stood before the mirror in my hotel room, brushing some lint from the cuff of my pale blue blouse, adjusting a pearl earring. Distaste rose inside me. I had become the poster child for a woman in her early seventies—graying hair cut short and practical, pantsuit hugging my sturdy frame more snugly than it would have a year ago.

I patted the bouquet of fresh flowers on the nightstand, bright red blooms wrapped in crisp brown paper. Then I walked to the window. Hotel Wentzl, a converted sixteenth-century mansion, sat on the southwest corner of the Rynek, Kraków’s immense town square. I chose the location deliberately, made sure my room had just the right view. The square, with its concave southern corner giving it rather the appearance of a sieve, bustled with activity. Tourists thronged between the churches and the souvenir stalls of the Sukiennice, the massive, oblong cloth hall that bisected the square. Friends gathered at the outdoor cafés for an after-work drink on a warm June evening, while commuters hurried home with their parcels, eyes cast toward the clouds darkening over Wawel Castle to the south.

I had been to Kraków twice before, once right after communism fell and then again ten years later when I started my search in earnest. I was immediately won over by the hidden gem of a city. Though eclipsed by the tourist magnets of Prague and Berlin, Kraków’s Old Town, with its unscarred cathedrals and stone-carved houses restored to the original, was one of the most elegant in all of Europe.

The city changed so much each time I came, everything brighter and newer—”better” in the eyes of the locals, who had gone through many years of hardship and stalled progress. The once-gray houses had been painted vibrant yellows and blues, turning the ancient streets into a movie-set version of themselves. The locals were a study in contradictions, too: fashionably dressed young people talked on their cell phones as they walked, heedless of the mountain villagers selling wool sweaters and sheep’s cheese from tarps laid on the ground, and a scarf-clad babcia who sat on the pavement, begging for coins. Under a store window touting wi-fi and internet plans, pigeons pecked at the hard cobblestones of the market square as they had for centuries. Beneath all of the modernity and polish, the baroque architecture of the Old Town shone defiantly through, a history that would not be denied.

But it was not history that brought me here—or at least not that history.

As the trumpeter in the Mariacki Church tower began to play the Hejna?, signaling the top of the hour, I studied the northwest corner of the square, waiting for the woman to appear at five as she had every day. I did not see her and I wondered if she might not come today, in which case my trip halfway around the world would have been in vain. The first day, I wanted to make sure she was the right person. The second, I meant to speak with her but lost my nerve. Tomorrow I would fly home to America. This was my last chance.

Finally, she appeared from around the corner of a pharmacy, umbrella tucked smartly under one arm. She made her way across the square with surprising speed for a woman who was about ninety. She was not stooped; her back was straight and tall. Her white hair was pulled into a loose knot atop her head, but pieces had broken free and fanned out wildly, framing her face. In contrast to my own staid clothing, she wore a brightly colored skirt, its pattern vibrant. The shiny fabric seemed to dance around her ankles by its own accord as she walked and I could almost hear its rustling sound.
Her routine was familiar, the same as the previous two days when I watched her walk to the Café Noworolski and request the table farthest from the square, sheltered from the activity and noise by the deep arched entranceway of the building. Last time I had come to Kraków, I was still searching. Now I knew who she was and where to find her. The only thing to do was to summon my courage and go down.

The woman took a seat at her usual table in the corner, opened a newspaper. She had no idea that we were about to meet –or even that I was alive.

From the distance came a rumble of thunder. Drops began to fall then, splattering the cobblestones like dark tears. I had to hurry. If the outdoor café closed and the woman left, everything I came for would be gone.

I heard the voices of my children, telling me that it was too dangerous to travel so far alone at my age, that there was no reason, nothing more to be learned here. I should just leave and go home. It would matter to no one.

Except to me—and to her. I heard her voice in my mind as I imagined it to be, reminding me what it was that I had come for.

Steeling myself, I picked up the flowers and walked from the room.

Outside, I started across the square. Then I stopped again. Doubts reverberated through my brain. Why had I come all of this way? What was I looking for? Doggedly, I pressed onward, not feeling the large drops that splattered my clothes and hair. I reached the café, wound through the tables of patrons who were paying their checks and preparing to leave as the rain fell heavier. As I neared the table, the woman with the white hair lifted her gaze from the newspaper. Her eyes widened.

Up close now, I can see her face. I can see everything. I stand motionless, struck frozen.

The woman I see before me is not the one I expected at all.

Chapter One

~~ Sadie ~~

Kraków, Poland
March 1942

Everything changed the day they came for the children.

I was supposed to have been in the attic crawl space of the three-story building we shared with a dozen other families in the ghetto. Mama helped me hide there each morning before she set out to join the factory work detail, leaving me with a fresh bucket as a toilet and a stern admonishment not to leave. But I grew cold and restless alone in the tiny, frigid space where I couldn’t run or move or even stand straight. The minutes stretched silently, broken only by a scratching—unseen children, years younger than me, stowed on the other side of the wall. They were kept separate from one another without space to run and play. They sent each other messages by tapping and scratching, though, like a kind of improvised Morse code. Sometimes, in my boredom, I joined in, too.

“Freedom is where you find it,” my father often said when I complained. Papa had a way of seeing the world exactly as he wanted. “The greatest prison is in our mind.” It was easy for him to say. Though he manual ghetto labor was a far cry from his professional work as an accountant before the war, at least he was out and about each day, seeing other people. Not cooped up like me. I had scarcely left our apartment building since we were forced to move six months earlier from our apartment in the Jewish Quarter near the city center to the Podgórze neighborhood where the ghetto had been established on the southern bank of the river. I wanted a normal life, my life, free to run beyond the walls of the ghetto to all of the places I had once known and taken for granted. I imagined taking the tram to the shops on the Rynek or to the kino to see a film, exploring the ancient grassy mounds on the outskirts of the city. I wished that at least my best friend, Stefania, was one of the others hidden nearby. Instead, she lived in a separate apartment on the other side of the ghetto designated for the families of the Jewish police.

It wasn’t boredom or loneliness that had driven me from my hiding place this time, though, but hunger. I had always had a big appetite and this morning’s breakfast ration had been a half slice of bread, even less than usual. Mama had offered me her portion, but I knew she needed her strength for the long day ahead on the labor detail.

As the morning wore on in my hiding place, my empty belly had begun to ache. Visions pushed into my mind uninvited of the foods we ate before the war: rich mushroom soup and savory borscht, and pierogi, the plump, rich dumplings my grandmother used to make. By midmorning, I felt so weak from hunger that I had ventured out of my hiding place and down to the shared kitchen on the ground floor, which was really nothing more than a lone working stove burner and a sink that dripped tepid brown water. I didn’t go to take food—even if there had been any, I would never steal. Rather, I wanted to see if there were any crumbs left in the cupboard and to fill my stomach with a glass of water.

I stayed in the kitchen longer than I should, reading the dog-eared copy of the book I’d brought with me. The thing I detested most about my hiding place in the attic was the fact that it was too dark for reading. I had always loved to read and Papa had carried as many books as he could from our apartment to the ghetto, over the protests of my mother, who said we needed the space in our bags for clothes and food. It was my father who had nurtured my love of learning and encouraged my dream of studying medicine at Jagiellonian University before the German laws made that impossible, first by banning Jews and later by closing the university altogether. Even in the ghetto at the end of his long, hard days of labor, Papa loved to teach and discuss ideas with me. He had somehow found me a new book a few days earlier, too, The Count of Monte Cristo. But the hiding place in the attic was too dark for me to read and there was scarcely any time in the evening before curfew and lights-out. Just a bit longer, I told myself, turning the page in the kitchen. A few minutes wouldn’t matter at all.

I had just finished licking the dirty bread knife when I heard heavy tires screeching, followed by barking voices. I froze, nearly dropping my book. The SS and Gestapo were outside, flanked by the vile Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst, Jewish Ghetto Police, who did their bidding. It was an aktion, the sudden unannounced arrest of large groups of Jews to be taken from the ghetto to camps. The very reason I was meant to be hiding in the first place. I raced from the kitchen, across the hall and up the stairs. From below came a great crash as the front door to the apartment building splintered and the police burst through. There was no way I could make it back to the attic in time.

Instead, I raced to our third-floor apartment. My heart pounded as I looked around desperately, wishing for an armoire or other cabinet suitable for hiding in the tiny room, which was nearly bare except for a dresser and bed. There were other places, I knew, like the fake plaster wall one of the other families had constructed in the adjacent building not a week earlier. That was too far away now, impossible to reach. My eyes focused on the large steamer trunk stowed at the foot of my parents’ bed. Mama had shown me how to hide there once shortly after we first moved to the ghetto. We practiced it like a game, Mama opening the trunk so that I could climb in before she closed the lid.

The trunk was a terrible hiding place, exposed and in the middle of the room. But there was simply nowhere else. I had to try. I raced over to the bed and climbed into the trunk, then closed the lid with effort. I thanked heavens that I was tiny like Mama. I had always hated being so petite, which made me look a solid two years younger than I actually was. Now it seemed a blessing, as did the sad fact that the months of meager ghetto rations had made me thinner. I still fit in the trunk.

When we had rehearsed, we had envisioned Mama putting a blanket or some clothes over the top of the trunk. Of course, I couldn’t do that myself. So the trunk sat unmasked for anyone who walked into the room to see and open. I curled into a tiny ball and wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the white armband with the blue star on my sleeve that all Jews were required to wear.

There came a great crashing from the next building, the sound of plaster being hewn by a hammer or ax. The police had found the hiding place behind the wall, given away by the too-fresh paint. An unfamiliar cry rang out as a child was found and dragged from his hiding place. If I had gone there, I would have been caught as well.

Someone neared the door to the apartment and flung it open. My heart seized. I could hear breathing, feel eyes searching the room. I’m sorry, Mama, I thought, feeling her reproach for having left the attic. I braced myself for discovery. Would they go easier on me if I came out and gave myself up? The footsteps grew fainter as the German continued down the hall, stopping before each door, searching.

The war had come to Kraków one warm fall day two and a half years earlier when the air-raid sirens rang out for the first time and sent the playing children scurrying from the street. Life got hard before it got bad. Food disappeared and we waited in long lines for the most basic supplies. Once there was no bread for a whole week.

Then about a year ago, upon orders from the General Government, Jews teemed into Kraków by the thousands from the small towns and villages, dazed and carrying their belongings on their backs. At first I wondered how they would all find places to stay in Kazimierz, the already cramped Jewish Quarter of the city. But the new arrivals were forced to live by decree in a crowded section of the industrial Podgórze district on the far side of the river that had been cordoned off with a high wall. Mama worked with the Gmina, the local Jewish community organization, to help them resettle, and we often had friends of friends over for a meal when they first arrived, before they went to the ghetto for good. They told stories from their hometowns too awful to believe and Mama shooed me from the room so I would not hear.

Several months after the ghetto was created, we were ordered to move there as well. When Papa told me, I couldn’t believe it. We were not refugees, but residents of Kraków; we had lived in our apartment on Meiselsa Street my entire life. It was the perfect location: on the edge of the Jewish Quarter but easy walking distance to the sights and sounds of the city center and close enough to Papa’s office on Stradomska Street that he could come home for lunch. Our apartment was above an adjacent café where a pianist played every evening. Sometimes the music spilled over and Papa would whirl Mama around the kitchen to the faint strains. But according to the orders, Jews were Jews. One day. One suitcase each. And the world I had known my entire life disappeared forever.

I peered out of the thin slit opening of the trunk, trying to see across the tiny room I shared with my parents. We were lucky, I knew, to have a whole room to ourselves, a privilege we had been given because my father was a labor foreman. Others were forced to share an apartment, often two or three families together. Still, the space felt cramped compared to our real home. We were ever on top of one another, the sights and sounds and smells of daily living magnified.

“Kinder, raus!” the police called over and over again now as they patrolled the halls. Children, out. It was not the first time the Germans had come for children during the day, knowing that their parents would be at work.

But I was no longer a child. I was eighteen and might have joined the work details like others my age and some several years younger. I could see them lining up for roll call each morning before trudging to one of the factories. And I wanted to work, even though I could tell from the slow, painful way my father now walked, stooped like an old man, and how Mama’s hands were split and bleeding that it was hard and awful. Work meant a chance to get out and see and talk to people. My hiding was a subject of much debate between my parents. Papa thought I should work. Labor cards were highly prized in the ghetto. Workers were valued and less likely to be deported to one of the camps. But Mama, who seldom fought my father on anything, had forbidden it. “She doesn’t look her age. The work is too hard. She is safest out of sight.” I wondered as I hid now, about to be discovered at any second, if she would still think she was right.

The building finally went silent, the last of the awful footsteps receding. Still I didn’t move. That was one of the ways they trapped people who were hiding, by pretending to go away and lying in wait when they came out. I remained motionless, not daring to leave my hiding place. My limbs ached, then went numb. I had no idea how much time had passed. Through the slit, I could see that the room had grown dimmer, as if the sun had lowered a bit.

Sometime later, there were footsteps again, this time a shuffling sound as the laborers trudged back silent and exhausted from their day. I tried to uncurl myself from the trunk. But my muscles were stiff and sore and my movements slow. Before I could get out, the door to our apartment flung open and someone ran into the room with steps light and fluttering.

“Sadie!” It was Mama, sounding hysterical.

“Jestem tutaj,” I called. I am here. Now that she was home, she could help me untangle myself and get out. But my voice was muffled by the trunk. When I tried to undo the latch, it stuck.

Mama raced from the room back into the corridor. I could hear her open the door to the attic, then run up the stairs, still searching for me. “Sadie!” she called. Then, “My child, my child,” over and over again as she searched but did not find me, her voice rising to a shriek. She thought I was gone.

“Mama!” I yelled. She was too far away to hear me, though, and her own cries were too loud. Desperately, I struggled once more to free myself from the trunk without success. Mama raced back into the room, still wailing. I heard the scraping sound of a window opening and felt a whoosh of cold air. At last I threw myself against the lid of the trunk, slamming my shoulder so hard it throbbed. The latch sprang open.

I broke free and stood up quickly. “Mama?” She was standing in the oddest position, with one foot on the window ledge, her willowy frame silhouetted against the frigid twilight sky. “What are you doing?” For a second, I thought she was looking for me outside. But her face was twisted with grief and pain. I knew then why Mama was on the window ledge. She assumed I had been taken along with the other children. And she didn’t want to live. If I hadn’t freed myself from the trunk in time, Mama would have jumped. I was her only child, her whole world. She was prepared to kill herself before she would go on without me.

A chill ran through me as I sprinted toward her. “I’m here, I’m here.” She wobbled unsteadily on the window ledge and I grabbed her arm to stop her from falling. Remorse ripped through me. I always wanted to please her, to bring that hard-won smile to her beautiful face. Now I had caused her so much pain she’d almost done the unthinkable.

“I was so worried,” she said after I’d helped her down and closed the window. As if that explained everything. “You weren’t in the attic.”

“But, Mama, I hid where you told me to.” I gestured to the trunk. “The other place, remember? Why didn’t you look for me there?”

Mama looked puzzled. “I didn’t think you would fit anymore.” There was a pause and then we both began laughing, the sound scratchy and out of place in the pitiful room. For a few seconds, it was like we were back in our old apartment on Meiselsa Street and none of this had happened at all. If we could still laugh, surely things would be all right. I clung to this last improbable thought like a life preserver at sea.

But a cry echoed through the building, then another, silencing our laughter. It was the mothers of the other children who had been taken by the police. There came a thud outside. I started for the window, but my mother blocked me. “Look away,” she ordered. It was too late. I glimpsed Helga Kolberg, who lived down the hall, lying motionless in the coal-tinged snow on the pavement below, her limbs cast at odd angles and skirt splayed around her like a fan. She had realized her children were gone and, like Mama, she didn’t want to live without them. I wondered whether jumping was a shared instinct, or if they had discussed it, a kind of suicide pact in case their worst nightmares came true.

My father raced into the room then. Neither Mama nor I said a word, but I could tell from his unusually grim expression that he already knew about the aktion and what had happened to the other families. He simply walked over and wrapped his enormous arms around both of us, hugging us tighter than usual.

As we sat, silent and still, I looked up at my parents. Mama was a striking beauty—thin and graceful, with white-blond hair the color of a Nordic princess’. She looked nothing like the other Jewish women and I had heard whispers more than once that she didn’t come from here. She might have walked away from the ghetto and lived as a non-Jew if it wasn’t for us. But I was built like Papa, with the dark, curly hair and olive skin that made the fact that we were Jews undeniable. My father looked like the laborer the Germans had made him in the ghetto, broad-shouldered and ready to lift great pipes or slabs of concrete. In fact, he was an accountant—or had been until it became illegal for his firm to employ him anymore. I always wanted to please Mama, but it was Papa who was my ally, keeper of secrets and weaver of dreams, who stayed up too late whispering secrets in the dark and had roamed the city with me, hunting for treasure. I moved closer now, trying to lose myself in the safety of his embrace.

Still, Papa’s arms could offer little shelter from the fact that everything was changing. The ghetto, despite its awful conditions, had once seemed relatively safe. We were living among Jews and the Germans had even appointed a Jewish council, the Judenrat, to run our daily affairs. Perhaps if we laid low and did as we were told, Papa said more than once, the Germans would leave us alone inside these walls until the war was over. That had been the hope. But after today, I wasn’t so sure. I looked around the apartment, seized with equal parts disgust and fear. In the beginning, I had not wanted to be here; now I was terrified we would be forced to leave.

“We have to do something,” Mama burst out, her voice a pitch higher than usual as it echoed my unspoken thoughts.
“I’ll take her tomorrow and register her for a work permit,” Papa said. This time Mama did not argue. Before the war, being a child had been a good thing. But now being useful and able to work was the only thing that might save us.
Mama was talking about more than a work visa, though. “They are going to come again and next time we won’t be so lucky.” She did not bother to hold back her words for my benefit now. I nodded in silent agreement. Things were changing, a voice inside me said. We could not stay here forever.

“It will be okay, kochana,” Papa soothed. How could he possibly say that? But Mama laid her head on his shoulder, seeming to trust him as she always had. I wanted to believe it, too. “I will think of something. At least,” Papa added as we huddled close, “we are all still together.” The words echoed through the room, equal parts promise and prayer.