“Laddermen!” Trumpelman shouted. “Lash the second ladder onto the first! Raise it to the second-floor window. Faybush! Build a fire under the pumper to get it thawed.” Then he walked to where the fire fighters were still holding the net. Everyone looked up to the third story, where the Bloomgardens cowered. “This is Trumpelman! This is the Elder! Come to the window! It’s an order from the Judenrat! Trumpelman commands you to jump!”

It worked! First the six heads appeared. Then one after the other, the youngest first, then the older ones, the family sailed down. After Ignacy, who was eleven, the rescuers began to stagger, the center of the canvas started to sag. The father came next to last, with his palms together, like a diver. Finally Zinta Bloomgarden—there were already flames burning along her shoulders—made the leap. In spite of the shortages, she was a heavy woman; when she landed the net split in two pieces, it flew from the firemen’s hands, then wrapped itself around her, snuffing out all the flames.

Everyone burst into applause, not only because of the rescue of the Bloomgarden family, but because Wax, the tillerman, was now coming down the extended ladder, with Professor Potash on his back. The man of letters was living. He had books pressed in his badly burned arms.

“A miracle! It’s a miracle!” the Jews were exclaiming.

Even the President of the Judenrat seemed stunned. “Can it be true? All my people saved? Every one?”

Everyone was crying with joy. Indeed it did seem a miracle, a supernatural event, that in that awful inferno not a single life, not one Jew, had been lost.

“Wait!” cried Madame Bloomgarden. “I don’t see any Einhorns! Has anybody seen an Einhorn around?”

No, nobody had. Once again rescued and rescuers had to lift their heads toward the top of the building, to the fourth floor, into which the roof had already caved. There, in the back, the missing family had had their apartment.

Two things happened next, first one, then the other. In the fourth-floor window—only it wasn’t a window any longer, just a gap in the roofless wall—the head and shoulders of a child appeared, undoubtedly one of the overlooked Einhorns. Then, just as it was sinking in that there was no way to save him, I. C. Trumpelman walked into the flaming house.

Minute after minute went by. Nisel attempted to follow the Elder, but Pfeffer, with his powerful arms, pinned him down. Parts of the building began to break and fall. There were loud crashes and thumps. Sparks like so many human souls flew into the blackened sky. On the ground the Jews prayed for the Judenrat Chairman’s return. For the young Einhorn, no longer visible at the window ledge, there was no hope at all.

After a half an hour there was a sound like a moan, like a person sighing, but it was the building itself, its timbers, or the cold wind rushing through them, that made the noise. Then the whole structure, all four floors of it, began to settle, to tip, to sway. The Elder walked out. Not singed. Not smudged. Timbers in flames tumbled around him, but not one came close. His camel’s hair coat had been removed and bundled around the Einhorn named Hersh, whose brothers, alas, along with his parents and grandparents, had all been burned to a crisp.