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22 Downstairs  Dining Room August 4, 1944 My brother turns two, talking a blue streak. Hot as it is, Mother bakes a cake, invites the grandparents down. First there’s spaghetti, which the toddler eats delicately by fistfuls. Then the shiny chocolate temple of cake. Everyone crowds around, singing to the future. To the future they have pledged themselves, eight people hiding on the other side of the world. Then this day the bookcase is swung back, stairway revealed. With shouts and shoves they are herded out at gunpoint. All but one will fall to the Final Solution. But the Gestapo won’t find the teenage girl’s birthday gift, a red-and-white checked diary. The world will find that. ...

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