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acknowledges the victims' families. . .I know this and I want to help you."
    He looked away. From down the hall came the muted moaning of the old women. Medieval and dark, this apartment echoed with grief. Ghosts emanated from the walls. Centuries of birth, love, betrayal, and death had soaked into them.
    "Tell me about your mother."
    His face softened. Perhaps the sincerity in her tone or the isolation Abraham Stein felt caused him to open up.
    "Maman was always busy knitting or crocheting. Never still." He spread his arms around the room, every surface covered by lace doilies. "If she wasn't in the shop below, she'd be by the radio knitting."
    Dampness seeped into this unheated room. "Can you tell me why someone would kill her this way?"
    Deep worry lines etched his brow. "I haven't thought about this in years but once Maman told me 'Never forgive or forget.'"
    Aimee nodded. "Can you explain?"
    He unwound the scarf from his shoulders. "I was a child but I remember one day she picked me up after school. For some reason we took the wrong bus, ending up near Odeon on the busy rue Raspail. Maman looked sadder than I'd ever seen her. I asked her why. She pointed to the rundown, boarded-up Hôtel Lutetia opposite. 'This is where I waited every day after school to find my family,' Maman said. She pulled the crocheting from her little flowered basket in her shopping bag, like she always did. The rhythmic hook, pause, loop of the white thread wound by her silver crochet needle always hypnotized me."
    He paused, "Now Hôtel Lutetia is a four-star hotel, but then it was the terminus for trucks bringing camp survivors. Maman said she held up signs and photos, running from stretcher to stretcher, asking if someone had seen her family. Person to person, by word of mouth, maybe a chance encounter or remembrance. . .maybe someone would recall. One man remembered seeing her sister, my aunt, stumble off the train at Auschwitz. That was all."
    Abraham's eyes fluttered but he continued. "A year after Liberation, she found my grand-père , almost unrecognizable. I remember him as a quiet man who jumped at little noises. She told me she'd never forget those who took her family. ' Cheri,' she told me, 'I can't let them be forgotten. You must remember.'"
    Aimee figured little had changed in this dim room with its musty old-lady smell since then. She pulled her gloves back on to ward off the chill. "Why didn't the Gestapo take your mother, Monsieur Stein?"
    "Even they made mistakes with their famous lists. Several survivors I know were in the park or at a piano lesson when their families were taken. Maman said she came home from school but the satchels, filled with clothing and necessities in the hallway, were gone. Hers, too. That's how she knew."
    "Knew what?"
    "That her parents had saved her."
    Aimee remembered her own mother's note taped to their front door: "Gone for a few days—Stay with Sophie next door until daddy comes home." She'd never returned. But how awful to come home from school and find your whole family gone!
    "Your mother stayed here, a young girl by herself?"
    He nodded. "For a while with the concierge's help. She never talked about the rest of the war."
    Aimee hesitated, then pulled out the photo image she'd deciphered for Soli Hecht. "Do you recognize this?"
    He stared intently. After a moment, he shoved a pile of invoices aside to reveal a group of faded old photos on the wood-paneled wall. There was a blank spot.
    He shook his head. "There was a photo here. Similar, but no Nazis. Maman hated Nazis. Never touched anything German."
    Abraham jiggled the bottom desk drawer open. Inside were several empty envelopes addressed to the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, the Contemporary Jewish Center, at 17 rue Geoffrey l'Asnier, 75004 Paris.
    "She donated to their Holocaust fund." He stood up, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "I can't think of anything else." He shook his head. "I don't believe the past has anything to do with