Summary

This story is Rosa's recollection of a death march to a concentration camp and later, life in the camp, with her newborn daughter Magda and 14-year-old niece Stella. Therefore, it begins, not with a journal entry but with a characterization of Stella tainted by events yet to come. "Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell."

Rosa cradles her tiny baby at her breast, wrapped in a shawl. No one knows she is there except Rosa and Stella. Magda is hungry and Rosa nurses her. Magda cries and Rosa comforts her blond, blue-eyed daughter, who could pass for the Germans who imprison them. Rosa imagines how she will spare her daughter the fate that awaits them, perhaps by pushing her bundle into the arms of a woman at the edge of a village they pass, but so much could go wrong. Instead...