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nutritious meal and a warm bed to sleep in; the businessman, who by that stage realised death might be his fate if he refused, dared do nothing but follow Rumkowski’s instructions.
    From that day, Rumkowsi’s life changed dramatically.
    Reinvigorated, he acquired a dilapidated estate building in Helenówek just outside Łódź, and set up a home for orphaned children. His intention was that no Jewish child would have to grow up without food, a place to live, and at least some rudimentary schooling. He read a lot, and his reading now included for the first time works by the founding fathers of the Zionist movement, Ahad Haam and Theodor Herzl. He dreamt of creating free centres, where children could not only work the soil like proper kibbutznikim but also learn simple crafts in preparation for the vocational colleges that awaited them when they eventually left the homes.
    He acquired the funding to run his Kinderkolonie from various sources, including the American–Jewish aid organisation JDC, the Joint Distribution Committee, which donated freely and abundantly to all manner of charitable institutions in Poland. He raised the rest of the money the same way he sold life insurance. He had his methods.
    So here’s Mr Death again. But this time it’s not life insurance he’s selling, it’s sponsorship, for the upkeep and improvement of orphan children. He has names for all his children. They are called Marta, Chaja, Elvira and Sofia Granowska. He has photographs of them in his wallet. Small, bandy-legged three- and four-year-olds, with one hand thrust in their mouths, while the other gropes the air for some invisible adult.
    And there’s no escaping behind kitchen curtains for the prospective policyholders this time. Mr Death has found himself a profession that means he can set himself above life and death. He says it is every Jew’s moral duty to give to the weak and needy. And if the donor does not give what he demands, he threatens to do all he can to blacken that person’s name.
    His Kinderkolonie grew and flourished.
    Six hundred orphan children were living in Helenówek the year before the war, and they all saw Rumkowski as a father; they all greeted him joyfully whenever he took a trip out to see them and came driving up the long avenue. He would have his jacket pockets full of sweets, which he sprinkled over them like confetti, to make sure it was they who ran after him and not him after them.
    But Mr Death is Mr Death, whatever coat he chooses to wear.
    There is a particular kind of wild beast, he once told the Green House children. It is woven from little bits of all the animals the Lord ever created. This beast’s tail is forked, and it is to be seen walking on four legs. It has scales like a snake or a lizard and teeth as sharp as a wild boar. It is unclean; its belly drags on the ground. Its breath is as hot as fire and burns everything around it to ashes.
    It was a wild beast like that which came to us in the autumn of 1939.
    It changed everything. Even people who had previously lived peacefully side by side became part of the body of that wild beast.
    The day after German tanks and military vehicles rolled into Plac Wolności in Łódź, a group of SS men, drunk on cheap Polish vodka, went along the main road, Pietrowska Street, dragging Jewish tradesmen from their shops and cabs. Cheap Jewish labour was needed somewhere, it was said. The Jews were not even given time to pack their belongings. They were rounded up into big groups, ordered to form columns and marched off in various directions.
    Those who ran businesses quickly closed their shops. All those families who were able to barricaded themselves in their homes. The occupying German authorities then issued a decree allowing the Gestapo access to all homes in which Jews were hidden, or were suspected of concealing their wealth. Anything of value was confiscated. Anyone who protested or offered resistance was forced to perform some humiliating task