Summary

In Chapter 11, the doors of the movie ticket booth where Kasia, Zuzannah and Pietrik lay waiting burst open and SS pour in, arresting the three. With her heart in her throat, Kasia watches her mother approach the scene, carrying cheese sandwich for Kasia’s lunch. “The look on her face scared me as much as anything. I’d only seen that look once before, on the wild-eyed face of a horse hit by a carriage and dying in the street” (138). Matka protests with the guards to let her daughters go, until eventually the SS takes her as well. The group is driven to Lublin Castle where the women are separated and carted into a train. Kasia recognizes her former math teacher, arrested after her husband was caught distributing underground newspapers. Crowded into the train, forced to relieve themselves in tin buckets...