The Orphan's Tale

by Pam Jenoff

Keep your eyes down, that has been the lesson of the years of war. No good ever came from noticing the business of others.

Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough?

But we represent everything Hitler hates: the freaks and oddities in a regime that is all about conformity. They will not permit us to go on forever.

You love the people they were before, below all the awfulness that made them do this thing, you know?”

“Sometimes our forever life does not last as long as we think.”

His kind of courage was boundless, though, and he would not have turned away a person in need, whether a star performer or a simple laborer or a child such as Theo with no skills at all. It was not about the circus or family connections, but human decency.

“We cannot change who we are. Sooner or later we will all have to face ourselves.”