I cleared my throat. “I don’t associate with the same people as my stepmother,” I replied slowly, struggling to keep my voice even. Neither Klara nor Magda said anything further and there was an awkward moment of silence among us.

I lifted my chin. “It’s no matter,” I said, attempting to brush off the rejection. “I’ve been busy. There’s just so much I need to get done before Krys gets back.” I had not told my friends that Krys and I had ended our relationship. It was not just the fact that we seldom saw each other or that I was embarrassed. Rather, saying it aloud would force me to admit it to myself, make it real. “He’ll be back soon and then we can plan our wedding.”

“Yes, of course he will,” Magda offered, and I felt a twinge of guilt as I remembered her own fiancé, Albert, who had been taken by the Germans when they raided the university and arrested all of the professors. He had never returned.

“Well, we must be going,” Klara said. “We have a reservation at seven thirty.” For a split second I wished that for all of their rudeness, they might still invite me to join them. Some pathetic part of me would have swallowed my pride and said yes for a few hours of company.

But they did not. “Goodbye, then,” Klara said coldly. She took Magda’s arm and led her away, their laughter carrying back across the square with the wind. Their heads were tilted conspiratorially toward one another and I felt certain they were talking about me.

Never mind, I told myself, pushing the rejection away. I drew my sweater closer against the summer breeze, which now carried an ominous chill. Krys would be back soon and we would get engaged. We would pick up right where we had left off and it would be as if this terrible intermission never happened at all.

3

Sadie

March 1943

A loud scraping sound below awakened me from sleep.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been disturbed by noise in the ghetto at night. The walls of our apartment building, which had been hastily constructed to divide the original dwellings into smaller units, were paper-thin and the ordinarily muffled sounds of daily life passed readily through them. Within our apartment, the night sounds were constant, too, my father’s heavy breathing and snores, my mother’s quiet grunts as she tried to find a comfortable position to rest her newly swollen belly. I often heard my parents whispering to one another in our tiny shared space after they thought I was asleep.

Not that they tried to hide so many things from me anymore. It had become impossible in the year since I was nearly caught and taken in the aktion to ignore the awfulness of our worsening situation. After a grueling winter with no heat and little food, sickness and death were everywhere. People young and old died of starvation and disease or were shot for not obeying the ghetto police orders quickly enough or for some other perceived infraction while lined up for the work details each morning.