Daniel's Story

Daniel and his family worry about numerous diseases, including typhus. His mom makes them clean the lice from their clothes every night, as lice can cause typhus. One night, near the end of 1942, Daniel and his parents delouse their clothes when Erika bursts in with her new friend, Rosa. As Daniel is in his underwear, he’s embarrassed. Though Daniel thinks Rosa’s red hair and pale skin are peculiar, he’s in love. She jokingly compares their situation to monkeys at the zoo and invites Daniel to a youth group meeting. At the meeting, banned books are on the shelves, and the young people debate cooperation with the Nazis versus violent resistance.

Erika plays the violin in the Lodz orchestra. She’s the youngest member, and during an evening of Beethoven, Daniel watches her with his parents and Rosa. The music’s beauty makes him want to survive. After the concert, Ruth throws a party at the apartment.

Daniel learns Rosa is from a well-off family. Her dad owned three fur shops and was a member of the Jewish Council before the Nazis deported him. Still in Lodz are her mom, big brother, and little brother.

On his 16th birthday, Daniel attends another youth group meeting. Rosa says the transports equal death. The Nazis don’t let the Jews live elsewhere, but they kill them in Chelmno. The deportations have slowed, but Rosa wants them to prepare for a potential acceleration. Daniel suggests finding hiding places and creating warning systems. They discuss Palestine and the dream of a free community.

Rosa and Daniel see each other every night, and Daniel wants to kiss her, but they lack privacy. Rosa tells him about the family across from her: The dad steals food from the two children. To punish him, Rosa and Daniel take his rations and leave a threatening note. The dad makes a fuss but stops robbing his kids.

Ruth gets sick during the summer of 1943. Winter arrives, and Friedrich and Daniel enter the apartment next to Friedrich’s place. The man who lives there has frozen to death. Instead of alerting the authorities, they break down his wooden furniture and burn it to keep Ruth warm.

Food becomes scarcer, but Erika continues to play her violin and refuses to write gloomy music. In March 1944, the authorities seize musical instruments, but Joseph won’t let Erika hand in her violin. Yet she can’t play it, and Daniel thinks she and their mom are on the cusp of death.

Erika and Rosa work at a sewing factory, making uniforms for German soldiers, and they think the kitchen staff is taking the good vegetables and leaving them with potato peels and turnip tops. Rosa organizes a protest, and the workers refuse to eat their soup. The authorities fire Rosa and the leaders, making them vulnerable to deportation.

To support Rosa, Daniel, who works at a metalworks factory, organizes the workers and agrees to send their heartier soup to the workers at the sewing factory. The sewing factory workers eat the soup and then, under Erika’s direction, go on a hunger strike until Rosa and the other leaders get their jobs back.

Despite the successful actions, Rosa is pessimistic. From the radio, she knows the Nazis will lose the war. Yet, she believes the rumors that the Nazis will destroy Lodz and try to kill as many Jews as possible before their inevitable defeat. During the summer of 1944, the Nazis shut down a nicer section of the ghetto, so Rosa and her family move into Daniel’s building.

In June, the radio says the Allies are invading France, and Daniel and his family spread the good news—though it leads to the arrest of several people, as they could have only found out about D-Day (the name of the day when the Allies landed on the French coastline) through the radio. In July, there is a failed coup against Hitler, and the Russians continue to beat back the Nazis and advance.

Postmen bring notices of deportations—“wedding invitations”—and the youth group hides the selected. The Nazis then reduce the ghetto to four blocks. Hans Biebow, the Nazi official in charge of the ghetto, tries to get the Jews to follow deportation orders by telling them they’re going to Germany to work—if the Russians find them, the Russians will punish them for working with the Nazis. At a family meeting, Joseph says Erika (she has bronchitis) and Ruth (she has tuberculosis) are too sick to hide in the basement, so the three of them will go on the transport, but Daniel and Friedrich will stay behind and wait for the Russians.

That night, Daniel tells Rosa and Erika he wishes he could kill every human—humans are monsters. Rosa agrees, but Erika thinks otherwise: they are humans with good and bad qualities, and they shouldn’t choose the bad traits, like the Nazis, but they should continue to fight for their survival so they can make the world a better place and start a loving community in Palestine.

As the final deportations occur, Rosa and Daniel say goodbye. Rosa refuses to tell Daniel where she and her family hide—if he gets caught, he can’t disclose her location. Rosa is sure the transports will take Jews to Auschwitz, and she tells Daniel that, once the war is over, they can reunite in Lodz at his apartment. She tells him to live, and they kiss.

In the morning, Joseph, Ruth, and Erika go to the train station, and Daniel and Friedrich take turns going to the hiding place—the cellar under the bakery. The Gestapo catches Daniel and shoves him on a train. When the chaotic, deadly train stops, Daniel marches to an open field. The awful smell of smoke makes him gag, but he spots his mom, dad, and sister and screams to get their attention. Due to the barking dogs and violent noises, they don’t hear him.

The Nazis divide the women and men into two lines, and Daniel runs to his dad, who tells him to slap his cheeks and stand straight. The Nazis don’t send Daniel or Joseph to the right (death) but to the left, where they undress in a barracks, and prisoners shave their heads and douse them with disinfectant. They also put on striped uniforms and wooden shoes.

Joseph says the Nazis move the Jews into gas chambers and then burn their bodies—that’s where the smoke comes from. He claims Erika and Ruth died in the gas chambers, but Daniel thinks his mom and sister might be alive.