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should go without me,” he says.
    My mother is torn between my safety and leaving my father. In the end, she says, “We can’t go without you, Helmut,” and that is the first time I see my father cry.
    â€œIf we can’t leave, then we must hide,” my father says. He starts to approach the other doctors and nurses from the hospital.
    I remember that we have many friends, from all the people who came to our parties.
    My mother says to me privately, “It’s not easy for your father to ask for help. He’s used to other people asking him for help.”
    As the days pass, my father looks more discouraged. Even though they are in the profession of saving lives, none of his colleagues are willing to provide us with refuge.
    By now, I am not allowed to go to school anymore, and it’s just the three of us at home.
    All our help have left as well.
    I always thought it would be wonderful not to have to go to school and to have both my parents at home with me, but this is not how I imagined it would be.

Chapter 37
    W hy do people hate us so much,Mama?” I ask.
    My mother says, “Do you remember what you said when you were a little boy, and you tripped on the street?”
    I shook my head because I couldn’t remember.
    â€œYou had fallen and were embarrassed, so you said that an ant tripped you. Do you think that an ant could have tripped you?”
    â€œNo, of course not,” I answer.
    â€œWell, to Hitler, we’re the ant. He has many people believing that Jews are the cause of their troubles, but he hasn’t fooled everyone. You know Franciszka is smarter than that, right? Well, there are others too.”
    My mother’s words are comforting.

Chapter 38
    A fter all our servants have left, Franciszka still comes with her fresh eggs and vegetables. My mother says, “There is some decency in the world after all.”
    Franciszka comes even though she knows we’re Jewish, and, unlike the others, she doesn’t charge us double for doing so.
    One day, my mother is talking to Franciszka, and she lowers her voice the way she does when she doesn’t want me to hear what she is saying to my father.
    â€œCan you hide us? We have money. We can pay you.”
    Franciszka takes a moment to think and then says, “I only have two rooms in my house. One is the kitchen and the other is a bedroom that I share with my daughter. There is nowhere to hide, unless . . .” and then she lowers her voice so quietly that now I can’t hear a thing.
    My mother calls out to my father, “Helmut, come quickly.”
    They huddle and speak with great animation. My father nods in agreement and Franciszka gets up to leave.
    For the next several weeks, my father sleeps all morning and doesn’t play with me until the afternoon.
    One night, my mother wakes me up and we walk in the dark along the river.
    I am really tired, but my mother says that it’s important to keep walking.
    My father leads the way and seems to know where to go even though it’s hard to see anything.
    Finally, when we arrive, it turns out to be where Franciszka lives.
    I am so tired that I want to sleep in the bed as soon as we arrive.
    My mother says that we have to wait while my father and Franciszka move her kitchen table, the rug underneath, and then a wooden plank to reveal a small cellar below.
    It’s dark and small, and I don’t want to go down there. But my mother takes my hand and says, “We’re playing hide-and-seek with the Germans, and they’ll never find us here.”
    Over the past weeks, my father, with surgeon’s hands, had dug this hole under the kitchen in the middle of the night to make a shelter for us.
    He brought cash and provisions to be stored in our hideaway with each trip. There were books, candles, dry food, and medicine, as well as precious pictures of our family.
    The timing was close.
    A few weeks later, all the Jews were