“Ha! Ha! It’s Faulhaber’s! From three years ago!”

It was indeed the American’s camera, dropped by him on his visit to the Orphanage Number 2. Quick-witted Krystal had scooped it up and hidden it inside his bed.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” It wasn’t just Trumpelman, not just the boys, who laughed at this joke. Ten or twelve orphans were standing in the doorway, too.

“Hee, hee,” they giggled. They put their hands over their mouths.

Trumpelman grew suddenly grim. “This is an illegal act! It could mean death and torture! You will be shot!”

Boldly, Krystal stepped forward. He took the camera from the Elder’s hands. “No! We have to remember!”

Lifshits was holding the reflector for the photoflash. He cried out, “So people will know!”

Then, before the old man could touch it, the camera, with its metallic lamp, went off. The light in the room was blinding. It seemed to collect, to burn, in the strands of Trumpelman’s hair. It was precisely this picture, with the face of the Elder part way to the side, his hair making a halo and with a star on his coat, that later appeared throughout the Baluty Suburb—in miniature on all of the Ghetto stamps, and blown up larger than life size on hundreds of buildings and hundreds of walls.

The flash lamp exploded again. The orphans who had gathered in the doorway—Gutta Blit, Rose Atlas, Szypper, Kipnis, young Flicker—took each other’s hands or clutched their friends’ nightgowns. Together they watched Trumpelman shining, melting, in the rainbows and spangles of light. Nisel Lipiczany shielded his eyes.

“Oh!” he cried. “He is the King of the Jews!”

Chapter Three

Smuggling

I

As the winter wore on, and Poland tilted farther away from the sun, the weather made life hard for the Jews. How cold November was! How bitter December. If you hit the ground with a shovel, the shovel broke off. People who liked to keep a glass of water by their bed at night discovered in the morning a glass of ice. At any time in the Baluty Suburb you could see these two sights: first, on street corners, in doorways, with rag balls on their feet, children doing a jig to keep warm; next, crowds of women following the coal carts—they hoped that a single “black pearl” would fall.

Luckily, most of the Balut was made from wood: one house against another, a slum really, with dirt streets and no sewer pipes. So when the last tree had been cut down, the Jews began to burn buildings. Some of the houses had porches in front or in back. The occupants took up the planks and railings and sawed them to fit in the stove. Other people burned their wardrobes, their tables, their stools and chairs. By the start of the year 1940, whole walls were missing, as were floorboards, and the banisters on stairs. The entire Ghetto, with its chimneys smoking and smoking, was like a train rushing down an empty track, toward nowhere, while all the time the fireman chops up his boxcars for fuel.