I leaned farther forward. But I could not do it. There was a sudden shuffling sound behind me. I turned to face Pan Rosenberg. He saw me near the water and his face seemed to crumple with understanding. “Sadele, no.” The nickname, one my mother used for me, brought tears to my eyes.

I tried to think of an explanation for what I had been doing so close to the edge. “You need to do better,” Pan Rosenberg said before I could speak. He pointed upward. “Up there, almost no more Jews live.” He did not bother to spare me from the truth the way my parents and others had when I was younger. There was no safety in hiding things anymore. “We are the last of our kind and down here we are alive. You owe it to your parents to go on.”

“But what is there left to go on for?” My voice was plaintive as I spoke these words of despair aloud for the first time.

“You must go on for your mother,” he replied. “After all, she left for you.”

“How can you say that?” I demanded, feeling the full rush of pain and loss behind my words, which came out rudely. “She abandoned me.”

“No, no,” Pan Rosenberg said. “She left to save you. Your mother didn’t leave because she didn’t care. She left because you and your sister were the only thing she had left to care about, and she thought leaving was her best chance to save you both. You don’t want that to be for nothing.”

He continued, “You are the only one of your family. You have an obligation to go on.” He was right. Though my heart ached with pain, I needed to be strong and do what was right for Mama’s sake—just as she had tried to do for me.

“My mother...” I still could not let go of the fact that she had abandoned me—or ignore the danger she was likely in right now. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. But you owe it to her to survive, no matter what.”

“But what if she doesn’t come back?”

For a second, I hoped that he would protest that wouldn’t happen and deny the possibility that Mama might not return. But he would not lie to me. “Then you owe it to her to live in a way she would have wanted. To make her proud.”

He was right, I realized. What would Mama think if she could see me now, messy and undisciplined, all of her hard work undone? I vowed that I would start a routine after that, and force myself to walk for exercise, to study and to keep myself clean.

Pan Rosenberg led me back inside and went to his corner of the chamber. A moment later, he returned and handed me a book. “I carted as many books as I could from our home to the ghetto.”

I nodded. “Like my father.” The two men were so similar in that way; despite their outward differences, they might have become good friends if they’d had the chance.