“Only Luria didn’t mourn aloud. He sat still on his bunk, legs crossed, and watched the others. Levy tried to get him to join but he wouldn’t. He talked to himself, his lips moving silently. Once he cried aloud and Levy broke the circle to run to him, to comfort him, too. . . . Levy had so much comfort in him . . .

“The next night two of the guards started beating the man whose wife had died. He was the youngest, the handsomest, of the Dabrowa men. His skin was smooth, like a girl’s, and the others used to tease him about not having to shave. The other men edged me and Danny behind them so we couldn’t see what was happening. Then one of them, Chern I think, forced us to lie on the floor under one of the bunks. We couldn’t see what was happening, but we could hear. The man screamed and groaned. We heard bones breaking and when they let us stand up again the man and the guards were gone.” Then like a litany, Relkin said, “We never saw him again.

“After that everything changed. No more Talmud, as if it didn’t matter anymore, and no more extra food, as if we weren’t children anymore. After that all the men did was hold meetings. They clumped together in the back of the barracks, whispering or shouting. But all in Hebrew. Still, I understood enough to know that Luria wanted to do something Levy didn’t, and the rest were with Luria. Only Levy was their rabbi’s son. Traditionally they wouldn’t act without his permission and they started hating him for not giving it, and finally they shut him out.”

Relkin put his hand on Hawkins’s shoulder. “I don’t know what it means for a black to be shut out, but for Jews like us . . . village Jews, ghetto Jews . . . all we had was each other and some old books that only isolated us more. To be shut out was to die. Levy was a strong man, but think of it! Going to bed alone in silence and waking up that way, and all the time in prison, locked away with men who once loved you, but now turned away when you talked to them and looked down when you walked by.