1. My family are close to me all the time.
2. Greta is here too. She and her parents came a few months after we did, so we can still see each other as much as we want. They live in the same block, a couple of floors below us.
3. Greta and I have adopted a cat. We have called him Felix and he is the sweetest little creature you have ever seen. He is always outside our block waiting for us whenever we go out and he meows and arches his back really high when we stroke him. He is mostly black but has little white paws that look like socks and a tiny white spot on his nose. After my family and Greta and the boys, who I still love even though I never see them, Felix is my favourite thing ever in the world.

The worst things about living here are:

1. It is very crowded. I don’t know how many there are of us now in this block but we share our three-bedroom apartment with three other families. That’s one family in each bedroom and the fourth in the lounge. With one bathroom between us.
2. The rats. (Although we sometimes let Felix into the apartment as he helps chase these away.)
3. There’s nowhere to wash our clothes so everything is quite dirty.
4. We are hungry a lot, as Jews are not allowed to work, so we have very little money to buy food. And yes, Greta and I make that worse for ourselves by sharing what little we get with Felix. But we have both agreed that it is worth it for the cuddles and purrs we get in thanks.

Even with all those things, every morning when I wake up, I remind myself that I’m lucky. I have somewhere to live. It might be crowded but at least it is warm and dry. Mostly. It wasn’t too bad in the summer, but now the autumn nights have started to draw in the cold is seeping through the walls – and so is the rain.

But at least we have a roof over our heads. And we are still here and still together.

Mutti and Vati are glad that I have a friend. Greta and I meet in each other’s apartments every chance we get. We talk about anything and everything, like we always have done.

I sometimes can’t believe I have only known her a couple of years. I feel like I’ve known her all my life. We are almost like sisters.

‘What do you want to be when we grow up?’ Greta asks me today as we sit together on the wall outside the tenement building, feeding tiny morsels of bread to Felix. It’s one of our favourite questions.

‘Alive?’ I reply.

Greta laughs and nudges me in the side. ‘No. Really. What would you be if you could be anything?’