This was the birthday that meant she was no longer a child, not that she had felt like one for some time, but this day made it official. Thirteen was a mystical and magical number. Love and unity were said to equal thirteen, a lucky number. But the truth was, nothing was lucky anymore. Starting the next month, at least one hundred seven thousand Jews began to be deported from the Netherlands to death camps such as Auschwitz so that more than 75 percent of all Jews in the country would be murdered by the end of the war.
