Page 187 - LEIBY

Chapter 24 187

clothes and her cheeks had been round and rosy as peaches.
Since she had arrived at the orphanage, however, her hair had
been cropped short, her face had become thinner, and her eyes
were dull and sad. A sudden thought struck Yosef – Mirushka
hadn’t gotten lost, she had simply run away. She had gone to
look for her adoptive mother on the farm!

Yosef continued scrutinizing the woman and her daughter, and
the woman stared back. She noticed his threadbare clothing
and his too-short hair, then pulled a candy out of her pocket
and offered it to him. Yosef made no move to take it.

“What happened, child?” she asked in Slovakian. “Are you
looking for something that you’ve lost?”

Yosef made no reply. The woman looked around furtively,
and when she had ascertained that no one was listening, she
switched to German.

“Yes, I’ve lost something very precious,” Yosef replied glumly,
in Yiddish. “My sister is lost, and I can’t find here anywhere.”

“I’ll go with you to the police station,” the woman suggested.

“The police?” Yosef shrank back in alarm. The word “police”
invoked memories of being deathly terrified as he was being
attacked by thugs, while the police stood by and did nothing to
stop them.

“The police may be able to help you,” she tried to convince
him. “The days when the police persecuted Jews and freedom
fighters are long over.Their job today is to help people. If anyone
happened to find your sister wandering about the street, they
would surely have taken her to the nearest police station. She’s
probably waiting for you there right now.”

“Oh no, the police will kill my sister,” Yosef panicked. “They
have orders to kill every Jew they meet.”

“The war is over, and the police don’t kill Jews at all anymore,”
the woman calmed him. “Don’t be afraid – if the police have