Summary

Section one begins with an introduction by the author Jennifer Roy on how she came to learn about her Aunt Sylvia’s experience during the Holocaust. Jennifer explains that Sylvia experienced dreams about her time in the Lodz ghetto. Sylvia is the wife of Jennifer’s father’s brother. Jennifer details the ways in she thought to tell Sylvia’s story and chose the first-person free verse because her aunt “made her experience feel real, immediate, urgent (iv).

Part One opens with context for World War II and population figures for Lodz, Poland and backgrounds. The region was populated by “educated professionals” (1). The 1939 Nazi invasion is detailed and the Lodz ghetto is fenced in May 1940.

Sylvia, known as Syvia in her youth, begins her story in 1939. She explains that at four and half, she overheard her father Isaac explain that Lodz is not...