Read The Girl in the Green Sweater for Free Online Page A

retribution.
    The Ukrainians rounded up the top-ranking Jews in the city—the upper classes, the intelligentsia, the community leaders—and delivered them to the Germans. They worked off target lists of Jews and checked each name off the list as that person was captured. As a small child, from my window, I could see it was terrible. I was not supposed to watch, but I could not look away. With the help of the Ukrainians, I could see, the German soldiers were pulling the Jews out into the street and shooting them on the spot or taking them on the transport to the Piaski, the sand quarry northwest of town where Jews were executed. It was too soon for the establishment of the forced labor camp on Janowska Road, but already large numbers of Jews deemed unfit for work were being sent by transport to the concentration camp at Belzec.
    Within just a few weeks, the Germans completely reorganized life in the city. It was ordained that all remaining Jews had to wear a white band with the Star of David on their arms any time they were out on the street. There was a curfew, from six o’clock in the evening until six o’clock in the morning. Separate stores were established where Jews could shop for food and necessities, but only during the hours between two o’clock and four o’clock in the afternoons, at prices determined by the Ukrainians put in charge of the operation.
    I do not have any firsthand observations on what life was like in the city in the first days and weeks of German rule, because I did not go outside. I stayed in our apartment on Kopernika Street with my mother and brother, and I could see everything from our big picture window. One night, German soldiers came to search our building. They knocked first on the door of the elderly doctor who occupied the entire first floor. He had a big, beautiful apartment—ten rooms, the whole length of the building. They took him out into the street. Then they went upstairs and kicked down the door that corresponded to the doctor’s downstairs apartment. This was our next-door neighbors’ apartment, and the Germans went inside and collected those people as well. But we were spared, because the second floor was divided into two apartments and they searched only the one, thinking the layout was the same as on the first floor.
    It was, my father used to say, one of the first of the many small miracles that kept our family alive.
    Frequently, the Germans would come to inspect our building, and Galewski, the concierge, would stall them until my father could leave by the back entrance. He was a good man, Danusha’s father. He helped us many times. The Gestapo and the SS, they would come for inspection and ask, “Are there any Jews living here?” Galewski would shake his head,
Nein!
Then he would engage the Germans in conversation, knowing my father would have seen them approaching from our upstairs window. Galewski kept them talking, to give my father time to hide or to escape.
    Our building was adjacent to another nice building the Germans had commandeered as a kind of headquarters, so many of the highest-ranking German officers regularly walked our street. Many of them eventually came to our apartment, where they took turns picking and choosing among our artwork, our furniture, our silverware. All across the city, the Germans would take what they wanted and leave the rest, setting fire to the buildings after they had looted them. Here, though, we were directly across the street from an old palace that was now occupied by the Luftwaffe. The general of the Luftwaffe had set up housekeeping there, and there were other officers with the idea of turning our building into their living quarters, so they were not about to burn it to the ground.
    One by one the officers came to our apartment, and one by one they left with our nice things. It must have been heartbreaking for my parents to see all their worldly possessions being taken from them, but at the same time they were thankful that