These smugglers, these boys, had become the lifeblood of the ghetto economy. We knew that our very lives depended on them: the price they could get for turnips or potatoes, the markets they could find for our used picture frames and books. We didn’t like to talk about it or acknowledge our indebtedness to them, or to the fragility of our system, but we also couldn’t avoid it. Given the meager kilocalories they allowed each of us, if the children hadn’t smuggled in food, we all would have perished. But then there was the cost.
