It was late, dark*and cold. The little band of travelers*were huddled together on the bench of an old train hoping to escape the tightening Nazi noose. Suddenly, they heard the conductor's loud voice, “Vos papiers, s'il*vous*plaît!”*(Papers, please!). My mother's identity card had been stamped not once, but twice with the word, “Juif.”*She knew that her life and that of her friends now rested in the palms of a stranger, a government official whose job it was to hand them over to the Germans.*
This is one of the many miraculous escapes found throughout this book. It is a story of survival, not just from the Holocaust, but from old world poverty, broken love*and a tenuous peace in order to*finally achieve the “American Dream.”
