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46 5 Summer 1942 The summer goes by mercifully with only a few transports. But we still live in constant fear of Engels and Klemm, whose outbursts continue to take many lives. One day they gun down Uncle Szlome’s two beautiful blonde daughters, Sara and Rachel, who are only nineteen and twenty-two. Alter witnesses the murders from his window. His sisters die in his arms. Now he has lost not just his parents but all three of his siblings. Alter is inconsolable. For days on end he walks around in tears. When he talks, nobody can understand what he is saying. It is as if he has become a different person. I worry that my once-strong cousin is now mentally ill. We all try to help him. We comfort him in our home and feed him every day. Our neighbors try to talk to him, but they can’t help. I take him out for a walk and try to convince him to look at the bright side. I tell him, “Alter, we are young, we are going to survive, and we are going to take vengeance.” When that doesn’t work, I say, “It is an act of God. What can we do? God will take care of the Nazis eventually. They will be defeated and destroyed like they destroyed our brothers and sisters. The destruction is already taking place. The Allies are already taking vengeance for us, bombing the Germans from all sides.” But nothing any of us say or do can help Alter. And I can’t blame him. When my own sister and Sima were taken away to the camps, it had been very difficult, but at least I had not seen them being murdered. Alter, on the other hand, had beheld everything. If my eyes had seen what his had, I would have gone through the same or maybe worse emotions than he. I probably would have committed suicide. Finally, Symcha tells us that he has found a psychiatrist among the German Jews who says he can help. The psychiatrist treats Alter with a medication that seems to calm him. The fits of crying abate, but now Alter stops talking almost completely. I fear that my cousin will never recover fully. We all watch over him to make sure he doesn’t relapse. Everyone in the family feels responsible for Alter, and we make sure that he continues dining with us at every meal. He becomes like a younger brother to me. With Symcha’s encouragement, my feelings for Herta are growing. Though I still silently fear that either or both of us will be murdered or taken away by the Germans at any moment, this does not stop me from drawing closer and closer to her. In fact, our precarious situation is pushing us together. She is my one solace from the world, and I hers. Since our feelings are still a secret and privacy is so infrequent, I often express myself in writing: short letters left by her bedside, under her books. I find I have a knack for Yiddish poetry. Our affections have blossomed into love. Whenever possible, Herta and I go for short walks through the few hundred square feet of forest that separate our house from the cemetery. Insulated from the crowded and dangerous town, the small patch of forest is the one place where we can find some semblance of normality again. We sit and read books to each other. Herta asks about what life was like in Izbica before the war and before her arrival. I tell her about how when I was younger, my mother could barely go anywhere with me because we would always be stopped by people wanting to pinch my cute cheeks. Herta is extremely amused when I describe the circus that I had once set up in our backyard involving ropes for acrobatics, and barn animals such as goats and calves brought by my cousin who was an animal dealer. Herta is also the best and most beautiful audience I have ever had for my singing. My favorite song to perform for her is a rich cantorial piece that my cousin Chaim taught me called “Rachem Na.”1 Herta never fails to become enchanted by its deep melodies. It connects us to our ancestors who sang this prayer for hundreds of years in many distant lands. I often ask Herta about the far-off places to which she has...

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