Read My Canary Yellow Star for Free Online Page B

People passed us, but nobody stopped to help me.” His face darkened. I thought of my dreadful afternoon in Madam’s salon, but this wasn’t the time to tell Ervin about it.
    “Thank God you had the common sense to run away! They might have crippled you – or worse. But don’t worry.
    “Get up! Something’s happening outside!” Somebody was leaning over my bed and whispering urgently in my ear.
    I sat up. The first thing I saw was Ervin’s face. His swollen lips were twitching from excitement and fear.
    “Come on! You’ve got to see this!” He motioned for me to follow him into his room. “Don’t turn on the lights!” he warned.
    Mama and Grandmama appeared in the doorway.
    “What’s going on?” Mama asked. “Do you realize it’s two o’clock in the morning?”
    “Shhh!” Ervin warned, his finger over his lips. “Something’s wrong at the Weltners’ apartment.”
    Ervin’s window faced our building’s courtyard, and the Weltners’ suite was directly across from his room. He parted his drapes ever so slightly and we all peeked through the slit in the curtains. The lights were on at the Weltners’. We could see several figures moving about. Loud noises: the sound of broken glass and a scream. One of the figures fell down. Then a door slammed.
    We ran into Papa’s office as quietly as we could. The windows there faced the street, and we could see a long black car parked under the street light.
    “Oh my God, the Gestapo!” Mama whispered.
    “Oh no! Not Zsuzsi! Not Pista!” Grandmama said.
    Three figures appeared on the street. When they reachedthe street light, we could see that two men in dark suits and fedoras were escorting Mr. Weltner. The old man was dressed in pajamas, his feet in bedroom slippers. One of the men had grabbed Mr. Weltner’s arm and the other was pointing a gun at his head. The two men pushed him into the waiting car.
    Suddenly, old Mrs. Weltner came running out of the house. She was in her nightgown, her white hair flapping about her face. She was crying and begging the men to let her husband go. The man with the gun swung around and aimed, and a loud flash of fire lit up the street. The bang was deafening in the stillness of the night, but Mrs. Weltner crumpled to the ground without making a sound. The car sped away.
    We were totally silent, afraid even to whisper lest a member of the Gestapo had stayed behind in the Weltners’ apartment. Everyone in the block had suddenly become deaf and blind, and Mrs. Weltner’s body lay untouched in a pool of her own blood on the moonlit street. When I finally risked sleep at dawn, I couldn’t help feeling grateful that the Gestapo hadn’t come for anyone in my family.
    I arrived at the workshop a few minutes before eight the next morning, exhausted and nervous. Although it was still early in the day, the spring air was sticky and unseasonablyhot. The gloomy skies seemed to echo the sight of Mrs. Weltner, lying crumpled in the moonlight.
    Before breakfast, I had balled up several pages of an old newspaper and then covered the ball with another page of newsprint. Like me, most of the other girls had wrapped their bundles in newspaper. A few of them carried packages wrapped in rags. We all took our bundles – large, small, rectangular, cylindrical, round, or irregular in shape – into the salon before we went into the workshop. It was all done very quietly.
    I spent the morning trying to make shoulder pads for ladies’ blouses. It was difficult to concentrate, for I kept hearing in my head the deafening bang of the Gestapo gun. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make the shoulder pad I was working on less lumpy. To distract myself, I tried to think about Peter and how much I enjoyed his company. Unfortunately, this distraction didn’t work. The latest shoulder pad I was making puckered more than ever. I tried to unpick my stitches and pricked my finger in the process. Now the shoulder pad was not only lumpy, but also had a