53 pages • 1 hour read
Monica HesseA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In a dream, Zofia remembers whispering to her brother through the fence separating men and women at a concentration camp. She whispers that they will find each other after the conclusion of the war.
In the dream, Abek admits that something happened but that they don’t have to talk about it yet.
Lower Silesia, August 1945
Zofia lines up at a Red Cross desk to give the details of herself and her younger brother, Abek, whom she is looking for. She hasn’t seen Abek in five years since the family was taken to Auschwitz Birkenau. Abek Lederman, Zofia explains, would be 12 now. She receives a document saying that she was a prisoner at Gross-Rosen, which will help her to get food rations.
Zofia is disorientated and easily overwhelmed; she has just been released from the hospital after years in concentration camps, most recently the Gross-Rosen camp. She remembers her family being sorted on a soccer field in the Polish town she is from, Sosnowiec. She and her family—Mama, Papa, Baba Rose, Aunt Maja, Abek—were taken to Birkenau. Those selected to live were sent to a line on the right. Zofia thinks she remembers herself and Abek being sent right for hard labor, whereas the rest of her family were all sent left to die in the gas chambers.
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Brothers & Sisters
View Collection
Family
View Collection
Fear
View Collection
Good & Evil
View Collection
Grief
View Collection
Guilt
View Collection
Hate & Anger
View Collection
Marriage
View Collection
Memorial Day Reads
View Collection
Memory
View Collection
Military Reads
View Collection
Mortality & Death
View Collection
New York Times Best Sellers
View Collection
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
View Collection
Truth & Lies
View Collection
Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love
View Collection
War
View Collection
World War II
View Collection