Summary

The section starts as Josef approaches Antwerp, Belgium, and the ship is having a party. Belgium, Holland, and France agreed to take the refugees. Under Hitler’s portrait, Josef and his family are told they are going to France. They de-board the ship as their mother reminds them to keep their coats on. Ruthie and Josef enrolled in school, and their mother gets a job. Eight months later, Germany invades France and the family is on the run again.

Isabel is still off the coast of Florida, as everyone paddles as fast as they can. Lito begins to confess that once many years ago as an officer he had turned away a ship full of Jewish refugees and he wonders, “How many of them died because we turned them away? Because I was just doing my job” (276). He says he kept telling them...