Page 172 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

AUNT EVA TOLD HANNAH THE END OF THE STORY MUCH
later, when the two of them were alone, because no
one else would ever have believed them. She said that,
of all the villagers young Chaya had come to the camp
with that spring, only two were alive at the end of the
war. Yitzchak, who had indeed escaped, had lived in
the forest with the partisans, fighting the Germans. And
Gitl. When the camp had been liberated in 1945, Gitl
weighed only seventy-three pounds because she had
insisted on sharing her rations with the children. But
she was alive.
The blokova and all the villagers from Viosk were
dead, but among the living, besides Gitl, Yitzchak, and
Rivka, were Leye and her baby, a solemn three-year-
old.
Gitl and Yitzchak had emigrated to Israel, where they
lived, close friends, until well into their seventies. Nei-
ther of them ever married. Yitzchak became a politi-

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