“Leaving is impossible,” Pawel said patiently, as if he had not just explained the whole thing to me. “The Germans have the end of the tunnel guarded.”

“There’s no other choice,” her husband agreed.

But the woman took her son from her husband and started for the entrance to the chamber. “There’s a way out ahead, I know it,” she insisted stubbornly, pushing past Pawel and heading in the opposite direction from where we had come.

“Please,” Pawel said. “You mustn’t go. It’s not safe. Think of your son.” But the woman did not stop and her husband followed. In the distance, I could hear them still arguing.

“Wait!” Pawel called in a low voice from the entrance to the chamber. But he did not go after them. He had all of us—and himself—to protect.

“What will become of them?” I asked aloud. No one answered. The couple’s voices faded in the distance. I imagined them walking toward the place where the sewer met the river. Part of me wished that I had fled with them.

A few minutes later, a sound like firecrackers rang out. I jumped. Though I had heard gunfire several times in the ghetto, I had never gotten used to the sound. I turned to Pawel. “Do you think...?” He shrugged, unable to say whether the shots had been aimed at the family that had fled or had been fired on the street above. But the voices in the corridor had gone silent.

I moved closer to Mama. “It will be fine,” she soothed.

“How can you possibly say that?” I demanded. “Fine” was the furthest thing from describing this hell we had entered.

“We’ll be here a few days, a week at most.” I wanted to believe her.

A rat walked by the entrance to the chamber and eyed us not with fear, but contempt. I yelped, and the others glared at me for being too loud.

“Whisper,” Mama admonished gently. How could she be so calm when Papa was dead and rats were staring us down?

“Mama, there are rats. We can’t stay here!” The idea of staying here among them was more than I could take. “We have to leave now!” My voice rose to near hysterics.

Pawel marched over to me. “There is no back. There is no out. This is your world now. You must accept it for yourself and your mother, and for the child she is carrying.” He looked me in the eye. “Do you understand?” His voice was gentle but firm. I nodded. “This is the only way.”

Behind him, the rat still stood in the tunnel outside the entranceway, looking at us defiantly, somehow knowing that it had won. I never liked cats. But oh, how I wished for that old tabby that lingered in the alley behind our apartment now to take on this creature!

Mama turned to Pawel. “We will need plenty of carbide, and matches, of course.” She spoke calmly, as if she had accepted our fate and was trying to make the best of it. It seemed to me she should be asking and saying please. But she spoke in that special firm tone she used on occasion that always seemed to make people do as she wished.