The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

Mr. Diamant shook his head. “Di velt iz sheyn nor di mentshn makhn zi mies,” he said. “The world is beautiful, but people make it ugly.”

He said he had a row of girls waiting for him, that all he had to do was snap his fingers. I told him that was good, to go snap them and hurry up about it.

“Sadness can become cruelty. Remember that, ketzele. We do not know what happened to them in Germany. We should pity those women.”

I learned three things from Emilika that day: First, walk as if you have important business, and most people will assume you do. Second, always have your hair curled. And third, help can come when it’s least expected, and that’s good to remember, because it means you’re never really alone.

Fear got me nowhere. I knew that. And neither would anger.

But broken hearts wouldn’t help us survive any more than my temper.

It was wrong to paint all men the same color.

Fear comes with the dark when you’re lying still, waiting for the knock on the door. And fear is not always reasonable.

It had taught me that people like to divvy up one another with names. Jew. Catholic. German. Pole. But these were the wrong names. They were the wrong dividing lines. Kindness. Cruelty. Love and hate. These were the borders that mattered.

in a world where death is a shadow at the edge of every light, I discover that I have to smile.

He chose life. And that makes him nothing like them at all.

Sometimes it’s best just to nod.

It’s easier to tell yourself things like this than to actually believe them.

The ugliness is in the cold blue of his eyes.

“Sadness can become cruelty,”

“We’re always living days we can never get back,” I say. “So we make new ones. That’s all.”

There has to be a reason. There has to be a chance that we will survive this. I cling to that thought like my belief in God.

Hope is a beautiful thing to see on his face.

Quiet does not mean emptiness. Not always.

“You were hiding?” He looks at me. “You were … hiding Jews?” And now the Russian soldier takes me from Max, picks me up around the waist, and bounces me up and down. “Hero!” he shouts. “Hero, hero!” And the rest of his men shout with him.

But I decide it isn’t me they’ve turned their backs on. Just the very worst moments of their lives. No one wants to remember the attic.

“You gave me my life,” he says. “Now let me give it back to you.”

“One death or thirteen Jews,” she said. “It was a good trade.” Even though the death she referred to was her own. That is my definition of a heroine.