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matzo or any of the traditional food that was part of Pesach. Uncle Ernst assured us that God would certainly understand.
    My ninth birthday was observed the same way as the other children’s birthdays, with hugs and kisses.
    At the very end of May 1942, something wonderfulhappened. Cologne, a few hundred miles from Leipzig, was bombed by the British. Papa found out in early June, when he overheard two non-Jewish Germans discussing it inside a shop.
    He came home smiling and, dropping a small bag of vegetables in the kitchen, danced the hora around the room. ‘Come on, children, dance. Dance. Dance for freedom. Dance. That bombing is from our very good friends, the Americans, the English, the Allies, everyone who hates Hitler. Dance for the end of war.’
    How could anyone ignore Papa? His face was one big smile. We formed a circle and danced this old Jewish dance from times gone by. Even Erich danced. Agnes forgot her tantrums.
    Hope was that bleached light in a pitch black sky as bombs fell on Cologne. ‘Hitler is being hurt on his own territory,’ said Papa joyfully. ‘This war will end.’
    We continued to dance outside the apartment in a crocodile line down the stairs. Other residents, as they heard the news, joined in.
    Surely the war would end soon, everyone said. But it didn’t.
    In December, the winter wind whistled up the stairs of the apartment building and under our front door. Aunty Gitta pushed an old mat against it to keep what little warmth there was inside.
    Sometimes news of the outside world filtered through to Papa when he was shopping. He was known to a number of Leipzig non-Jews, and occasionally a shopkeeper might quietly talk to him and add a few almost decent-looking vegetables to our rations.
    ‘If the Nazis come here, I shall stomp on their boots, Miri,’ I told her later. ‘I hate them. I don’t want to be scared. I want to be brave, like Papa.’
    ‘You have to be scared of them. You can’t stomp on their boots. They’ll shoot you. Papa is scared too. He just doesn’t want to show you his fear. Now, stop trembling, Rachel. You’ll be ten in April. You are not a baby anymore.’
    ‘I am still the youngest. Miri, does that make me special?’
    While I was talking nonsense about what I would do to the Nazis, I realised with a shock that I wasn’t a baby. Suddenly that didn’t feel so good. Being the youngest in the family had given me the right to extra hugs, extra cheek-squeezing and generally extra kindness. I needed some reassurance that I still had my special role.
    Miri smiled at me. ‘All right. You are special, you funny little thing.’
    C LOTHING WAS PASSED down from one child to another. Because we were on rations, we didn’t seem to grow sideways, but we did get taller. I grew into Agnes’ clothing. She grew into Miri’s clothing. Miri seemed to have stopped growing, but she wore some of Mama’s clothing for a change. I wore Agnes’ horrible dresses with fitted belts and a woollen cardigan and, when it was cold, I wore her awful red coat. It had four buttons on it and a collar and it was ugly, but as I was cold I didn’t worry too much about how I looked. Erich wore his father’s shoes, though they were too big. He’doutgrown his old ones, and there was no way we could buy him new ones. Dear Uncle Ernst took out his needle and thread and sat patiently mending and altering our clothes, and lining Erich’s shoes with scraps of material so they would fit him.
    Miri had a friend called Jakob living in another Judenhaus across the road from us. Sometimes I’d see them sitting on the steps of his building. He was tall and thin, about three years older than Miri, and even through the window I could see his face light up when he spoke to my sister. Miri was pretty with her long soft hair and clear skin. I wondered if she knew how pretty she was.
    Meantime, Agnes was driving everyone crazy. She threw herself dramatically on the couch at least twice a day, crying. She had