Mama faltered, then shook her head. “There’s no time. Her nursing home is not Jewish,” she added. “She’ll be fine.”

Through the window over the sink, I glimpsed crowds of people being herded from the buildings onto trucks. I spotted my friend Stefania in the crowd. I was surprised to see her so far from her own apartment on the other side of the ghetto. I had imagined, too, that because her father was one of the Jewish Ghetto Police, she might somehow be spared, safe. Now she was being taken, just like everyone else. I almost wished I could go with her. But her face was white with fear. Come with us, I wanted to shout. I watched helplessly as she was pushed forward and disappeared into the crowd.

Mama stepped around me. “I’ll go first.”

Seeing her belly, the man in the hole looked surprised. “I didn’t know...” he murmured. The man’s face wrinkled with consternation. I could see him calculating the extra difficulties childbirth and a newborn would bring. For a second, I wondered if he might refuse to take my mother. I held my breath, waiting for him to say that it wouldn’t work and we would have to find another way.

But the man disappeared back into the hole to make way and my mother stepped forward. She handed Papa her satchel, then sat on the ground with effort, putting her legs through the hole. Under other circumstances she would have slipped through easily. “Little bird,” our father called her, and the name suited, for she was thin and girl-like even as she approached forty. However, she was bulky now, bearing the rounded stomach on her lithe frame as though holding a melon. Her skirt pulled down embarrassingly, revealing a patch of white belly. I thought, as I often had, that she was too old to be having another child. Mama let out a small yelp as Papa pushed her through the hole, then disappeared into the darkness.

“Your turn,” Papa said to me. I looked around, stalling for time. Anything to avoid going into the sewer. But the Germans were at the door of the building now, knocking hard. Soon they would break down the door and it would all be too late. “Sadie, hurry!” he said, and I could hear the pleading in his voice. Whatever he was asking me to do, he was doing to save our lives.

I sat on the ground as Mama had done and stared down into the hole, dark and ominous. A stench filled my nostrils and I gagged. Something rebellious and stubborn arose in me, eclipsing my normal obedience. “I can’t.” The hole was dark and terrifying, nothing visible on the other side. It was like the time I had tried to jump from a high tree branch into a lake, only a thousand times worse. I could not bring myself to go through with it.

“You must.” My father didn’t wait for further argument but shoved me roughly. The bulk of my clothes caused me to stick halfway down and he pushed me again, harder. The filthy edges of the concrete tore at my cheeks, cutting them, and then I was falling into the darkness.