Into the Forest by Rebecca Frankel

Into the Forest by Rebecca Frankel

Author:Rebecca Frankel [Frankel, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub


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From the moment Rose Salman ran to the woods, she felt unwanted. Her family had been killed in Zhetel by the Nazis. An orphan at thirteen, the only thing that helped Rose keep the fear and sadness at bay was the will to live. Small as it was, it remained rooted, resolute, deep inside her, overruling all her other instincts to relent and give up. She was in the Dvoretz labor camp in the fall of 1942 when she heard older teenagers talking about how they were going to run to the woods to join the partisans. Rose and a friend decided that when this group ran away, they would follow.

As Rose and her friend hurried along after the escapees toward the woods, the older teens saw they were being tailed and called out in hoarse whispers for the younger girls to turn back. When that didn’t work, the older kids threatened to harm the two girls and tried to chase them away. But Rose refused to budge. “I’d rather die from you than from Hitler,” she told them.

When they made it to Lipiczany Forest, she tried to join the partisans like the others, but being so young, and hardly what anyone would call sturdy, they had no interest in taking her. Eventually, Rose found a family camp where a few of the adults had known her parents in Zhetel, and she was permitted to stay. But none in the group would allow her to sleep in their zemlyanki, so at night she curled up on the ground outside. The pity they took on her soon ran thin. When the group moved camps to avoid being discovered, they tried to leave her behind. Rose would wake up on the cold ground to find the group had gone while she was sleeping.

She was frightened about what would happen to her if the Germans came and captured her alive; she’d heard stories of torture and abuse. Her despair brought her to thoughts of suicide but she saw no feasible way to take her own life. Rose would seek out the tallest tree she could find, following its branches to where they seemed to touch the sky. “Please, God,” she would pray, “take me away.” To die would be better than to be found alone.

Someone in the group would inevitably return to collect whatever belongings they couldn’t carry to the new camp in one trip. “Follow me,” they would tell her. “But don’t say I brought you.” Rose would trail behind, keeping a careful distance until she came to their new campsite, and the sad cycle would start again.

There were very few people in the woods willing to help orphaned children. But one Zhetel man would welcome so many into his own family camp that he would come to be known as “the father of all children.” If the virtue of his actions was any indication of the size of the man’s heart, Herz Kaminsky also had the ears and nose to match.



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