Still, Papa’s arms could offer little shelter from the fact that everything was changing. The ghetto, despite its awful conditions, had once seemed relatively safe. We were living among Jews and the Germans had even appointed a Jewish council, the Judenrat, to run our daily affairs. Perhaps if we laid low and did as we were told, Papa said more than once, the Germans would leave us alone inside these walls until the war was over. That had been the hope. But after today, I wasn’t so sure. I looked around the apartment, seized with equal parts disgust and fear. In the beginning, I had not wanted to be here; now I was terrified we would be forced to leave.

“We have to do something,” Mama burst out, her voice a pitch higher than usual as it echoed my unspoken thoughts.

“I’ll take her tomorrow and register her for a work permit,” Papa said. This time Mama did not argue. Before the war, being a child had been a good thing. But now being useful and able to work was the only thing that might save us.

Mama was talking about more than a work visa, though. “They are going to come again and next time we won’t be so lucky.” She did not bother to hold back her words for my benefit now. I nodded in silent agreement. Things were changing, a voice inside me said. We could not stay here forever.

“It will be okay, kochana,” Papa soothed. How could he possibly say that? But Mama laid her head on his shoulder, seeming to trust him as she always had. I wanted to believe it, too. “I will think of something. At least,” Papa added as we huddled close, “we are all still together.” The words echoed through the room, equal parts promise and prayer.

2

Ella

Kraków, Poland
June 1942

The early-summer evening was warm as I crossed the market square, weaving my way around the fragrant flower stalls that stood in the shadow of the Cloth Hall, displaying bright, fresh blooms that few had the money or inclination to buy. The outdoor cafés, not bustling as they once would have been on such a pleasant evening, were still open and doing a brisk business serving beer to German soldiers and the few foolhardy others who dared join them. If one didn’t look too closely, it might seem that nothing had changed at all.

Of course, everything had changed. Kraków had been a city under occupation for nearly three years. Red flags with black swastikas at the center hung from the Sukiennice, the long yellow cloth hall that ran down the middle of the square, as well as the brick tower of the Ratusz, or town hall. The Rynek had been renamed Adolf-Hitler-Platz and the centuries-old Polish street names changed to Reichsstrasse and Wehrmachtstrasse, and so on. Hitler had designated Kraków as the seat of the General Government and the city was choked thick with SS and other German soldiers, jackbooted thugs who walked down the sidewalk three and four wide, forcing all other pedestrians off their path and harassing ordinary Poles at will. At the corner a boy in short pants sold the Krakauer Zeitung, the German propaganda paper that had replaced our own newspaper. “Under the Tail,” people called it in irreverent whispers, implying that it was only useful for wiping one’s backside.