Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2 THREE DAYS EARLIER THE JEWISH GHETTO ESTIES, POLAND Max and his nine-year-old sister, Zena, walked along the dark and dirty street, ignoring the rat that skittered by. They hadn't eaten since last night's watery potato soup, and they were hoping to find something for supper. They had no money and nothing left to trade. But they weren't ready to give up. Suddenly two German soldiers appeared from around the corner, their boots clicking sharply on the stone sidewalk. Max and Zena jumped into the

gutter. Max wanted to curse these men, spit at them, chase them out of his town. But he stood quietly, eyes down, clenching his fists as he waited for the soldiers to pass. The men were Nazis, killer soldiers of Adolf Hitler, Germany's leader. Hitler had started a terrible war. He had sent his brutal armies to invade countries all over Europe. A year ago, Nazi soldiers marched into Esties, the Polish town where Max's family had lived for hundreds of years. The Nazis came with their tanks, their machine guns — and their hatred of Jewish people like Max and Zena. Hitler told hideous lies, blaming Jews for every problem in the world. In Esties, Nazi soldiers destroyed Jewish-owned businesses, including Papa's electrical repair shop. They set fire to the synagogue and ripped apart sacred Torah scrolls. They attacked Jewish people on the streets, including Dr. Latham, who had taken such good

care of Mama before she died. What had Dr. Latham done to deserve a beating? He had dared to look at the soldiers as he walked by them. Two months after the invasion, the Nazis forced all Jewish people to leave their homes. They all had to move to a ghetto — this bleak neighborhood of crumbling buildings on the edge of town. The ghetto was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, and patrolled by Nazi guards and policemen. It was like living in a jail. But the worst was to come. A month ago, in the middle of the night, policemen arrested Papa and dragged him away. They took dozens of other Jewish men, too. Nobody had any idea where they had been taken. But there were terrifying whispers — about gunshots echoing through the hills around the town, about locked trains that took Jewish people to prison camps. Some said that this was happening all around Europe. There were rumors that hundreds of

thousands of Jews had been taken away — and had never been heard from again. Max didn't know what to believe. All he knew was that each day, life seemed to get worse. He and Zena lived all alone now, in a small, dark room that stank of garbage. As life got harder and harder, Max thought of what his Aunt Hannah had said to him, just after the invasion. She'd put her hands on Max's shoulders, and looked at him with her glittering green eyes. "The Nazis want to take everything from us," she'd said in her clear and certain voice. "Do not let them take away your hope." Max looked around him now, at the woman limping past with tears in her eyes, at the ragged children slumped in the doorways. Finding hope in the ghetto was harder than finding food. Just then, Zena grabbed his arm. "Max, look!" she said, pointing at a little bird perched on the barbed wire fence at the end of an

alley. "It's a robin," Zena said. "Don't you know that robins are lucky birds?" Max arched an eyebrow at his sister. After all that had happened to them, did she really believe there was such a thing as a lucky bird? But then he glimpsed something else, just behind the bird: a raspberry bush, covered with bright red berries. Max stared, imagining the sweet fruit bursting in his mouth. Zena saw them, too. He and Zena rushed to the fence and dropped to their knees. They carefully stuck their arms between the wires, avoiding the razor-sharp barbs. They stretched their fingers, but couldn't reach a single berry. The bush was just a few inches too far away. Max looked around.

He could see no guards watching this area. And there was just enough space under the fence for Max to squeeze through. It was dangerous; anyone caught trying to leave the ghetto was arrested, or worse. But Max wasn't trying to escape. He would be outside the fence for just a minute or so. "I'll be quick," he said to Zena. "No," she said. Her blue eyes seemed to grab hold of him. With her blonde curls and round cheeks, people always said Zena looked like a doll. Sure — a doll made of steel. She was almost two years younger than Max, but he trusted her more than anyone else in the world.