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. . . and we were hoping that they might let him work in the munitions factory.”
    “That would be very smart of them to do that, but who says Nazis are smart? But I’ll find out.” Lilo cocked her head to one side and studied him. Where did he get this uncanny confidence? And if he didn’t know something, would he ever admit it? She doubted that he would. He was shorter than she was, thin as a rail, and looked as if he might blow away like a dry leaf in the slightest wind.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “How do you do what you do?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Get bread, get information — all that.”
    “Hey, did you see the sign on the iron gates?”
    Lilo nodded and whispered the words,
“Jedem das Seine.”
    “Yeah. ‘To each his own,’ or ‘One gets what one deserves.’”
    Lilo now realized that was what had irritated her when her mother tried to make sense out of the situation. It was as if she had been thinking they deserved this somehow.
    “So what about your father? Did you find out anything?” Bluma asked when Lilo returned to the table in the barbed-wire assembly room, where they both twisted the barbs onto the lengths of wire. Lilo stared at her mother’s hands.
    “You cut your finger, your thumb.”
    “These pliers are lousy. I think they give them to us especially so we’ll cut ourselves.” Lilo kept staring at her mother’s hands. Was it possible that two weeks before, those same hands had been making lace? It was as if their entire previous life had been some sort of chimera, a complete fantasy.
    “Did you find out anything?”
    “Not really.”
    Her mother looked up. “What do you mean ‘not really’?”
    “Shush, here comes the matron. We can’t be caught talking.”
    Once the matron was well past, Lilo continued. “I met a kid. He seems pretty smart. He says he’s going to look for him.” She heard her mother catch her breath. Then she reached over with her hand and stroked Lilo’s head.
    “Thank God.”
    “Nothing’s certain, Mama. Maybe he’ll find nothing. But I told him what Papa looked like.”
    “And that he’s a watchmaker? Did you tell him that he could be useful in the munitions factory in the next town? A lot of them work there, I think. And I hear they get fed well, too.”
    “Yes, Mama, I told him, and he says he’ll bring me some bread.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “No. He said he could ‘organize’ it.”
    “Who is this boy?”
    “Django.”
    “You mean like the musician Django Reinhardt?”
    “Not old enough, but maybe he’s related or something. He’s Roma.”
    “Roma, Schmoma — who cares, if he can find out about your father?”
    Lilo looked at her mother and smiled. “Yes, Mama. Roma, Schmoma, what does it matter?”

D jango shoved the piece of bread through the wire fence. But he did not meet her eyes. Lilo felt a dread swim up in her. Was this bread supposed to soften what was to come next?
    He began to speak, still without looking at her. “I found him.”
    “You did! How is he?”
    “He’s . . . he’s okay.” He lifted his eyes slowly. “He’s leaving tonight on a transport.”
    “Where? What for?”
    “I don’t know. I couldn’t find out much. I think it’s going east.”
    “East?” East was bad. East was where there were rumors of new camps. Camps that were not simply camps of concentration but extermination. It was said that they would need laborers to complete the camps.
    “But that’s not right. He can’t be going there. What do they need with a fine watchmaker? They need my father at Krupps, Siemens. I’m telling you, he can do the finest work. He understands gears, escapement wheels. He could make those electrical switches. Siemens makes millions of those.” Lilo babbled on as she threaded her fingers through the barbed wire.
    “I know, I know,” Django said softly. He wove this own fingers through and touched her knuckles.
    “To each his own — the sign on the gate says it. This is Papa’s