“I suppose you could try a genealogist,” Decker suggested.

Rina said, “Mr. Golding, what languages did your father speak?”

“Please call me Carter.” Golding thought a moment. “English and Spanish, of course. He spoke a foreign language to his sister. I was under the impression that it was German.”

“German?” Rina asked. “Are you sure it wasn’t Yiddish?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Golding said. “The two languages are similar, correct?”

“Yes,” Rina said. “Assuming your father is Jewish, there is a world of difference between the German-speaking Jews and the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Yiddish-speaking Jews were usually poorer—manual laborers, farmers, or merchants. German Jews were a different ball of wax. Lots of them were much more integrated into German society. In general, German-speaking Jews came from Germany. Hungarian-speaking Jews—like my parents—came from Hungary. Rumanian Jews came from Rumania. Lots of Czech Jews spoke Czechoslovakian. But Jews from Poland usually spoke Yiddish if they came from what we call the pale area—a border area between Poland and Russia.”

Decker asked, “Polish Jews didn’t speak Polish?”

“The rare educated ones did; those that lived in the city did. But most Polish Jews were very poor and lived in these small border villages. They were ghettoized even before the Warsaw Ghetto became official—do you know about the Warsaw Ghetto?”

Both of them shook their heads.

Rina ran her hand over her face. “When the Nazis were stepping up their eradication of the Jews, they herded them all in an area in Warsaw to keep track of them. It made the extermination easier. It’s not important right now. Maybe it’ll be important later on.”

Golding tapped his toe. “And what does it mean if my father spoke Polish?”

“Did he?” Rina asked.

Golding waited before answering. “Ernesto showed me some papers…in my father’s handwriting. The language wasn’t German. And it wasn’t a Romance language either. Maybe it was Polish.”

“All right,” Rina said. “That tells me that your father was either an educated Jew or city Jew or…he wasn’t Jewish, but a Pole.”

Decker said, “Where did Ernesto get his information from?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I…” His eyes misted up. “I haven’t gone through his school papers. I suppose there might be information there.” He sighed. “He told me that an Isaac Golding had died in a Polish camp. I don’t remember the name. At that point, it didn’t seem consequential. Maybe the written language was Russian.”

“You’d know if it were Russian,” Rina said. “They have a different alphabet.”

“Yes, of course.”

Rina said, “The big cities in Poland have some records, you know.”