What World is Left Read Free

has one, I wonder how she manages to hide it under her clothes or what she does with it when goes to sleep.
    â€œI’m fourteen,” Hannelore answers from inside her cauldron.
    â€œMe too!” I tell her, unable to hide my excitement. What were the chances we would be the very same age? It has been so long since I’ve had a friend to openmy heart to. And if Hannelore is my age and works in the diet kitchen, we will certainly become friends. Best friends even. I imagine us lining up for soup together, huddling to keep warm. The guards will never let us link arms, but we can stand close to each other and exchange stories about the boys we like. I can tell her all about Franticek Halop. How handsome he is and how sometimes, when I pass him in the street, he smiles at me.
    â€œMy arm is tired,” Hannelore says. Then she makes a sniffling sound.
    â€œWe’re lucky to be here.” My voice is sharper than I intend, but what surprises me most is how much I sound like Father. It could be him speaking from inside my cauldron. It’s odd, because I hate Father’s habit of turning everything into a lesson, and now I’m doing it myself. “They could have made us clean latrines,” I tell Hannelore. “Scrubbing cauldrons is a pleasure compared to that.”
    Hannelore sniffles again. I’m not sure I can be friends with such a crybaby.
    For a little while, all I do is scrub. I can feel my lips turning to a pout. This Hannelore has already disappointed me. She is the one to pick up our conversation. “Where do you come from?” she wants to know.
    â€œBroek,” I tell her, but then I realize she might not know where that is. I can tell from her accent that Hannelore is German. Perhaps she’s never visited Holland. “Broek is in Holland,” I tell her. “Not far from Amsterdam.”
    â€œI’m from Hamburg.” Hannelore’s voice sounds less tiny. “How did you end up in this place?”
    â€œGirls!” Frau Davidels is back. I can hear someone else’s footsteps too. It must be a Nazi supervisor. “No chatting!” Frau Davidels says. “Concentrate on your cleaning! Or else!”
    I hear Hannelore sniffle. I imagine she isn’t used to adults being stern with her. She must be a pampered girl. Maybe she is an only child, the long-awaited offspring of older parents. I can see them in my head. The mother is mousy. The father listens to Bach and smokes a pipe. They never raise their voices when they speak to her. No, Hannelore is their princess.
    The way my mind works almost makes me laugh. “That Anneke is always inventing stories in her head,” Opa, who is my father’s father, used to say about me when he knew I was listening. He was teasing, but I know that in some way, he had paid me a compliment. I cannot paint like Father, but I can invent stories. And certainly that is something.

Two
    Hannelore’s question gets me thinking: How
did
we end up in this place?
    I reach up with the brush and scrub at a troublesome bit of crust. We’ve been in Theresienstadt for only a month, and already it is getting harder to remember our old life. What brought us here, to this so-called model city?
    Of course they sent us here because we are Jews. In my case, though, that seems particularly unfair. Judaism means nothing to me. It’s true I’m a Jew, but I’m a Dutch girl, a Hollander first. I’ve never stepped foot inside a synagogue, unless you count one visit to the old, gray stone synagogue in Zutphen where my opa lives. Theo and I only went there to see the stone outside, the one that was laid by Isaac Van Raalte, Opa’s father, our great-grandfather. He was the last of the religious Van Raaltes.
    When Mother and I sometimes ran errands in Waterlooplein, the part of Amsterdam where the Orthodox Jews live, I felt as distant from them—withtheir prayer shawls draped over their shoulders, the