Catholic teenager Stefania (called “Fusia”) leaves her family’s farm to move to Przemyśl, where she begins working for the Jewish Diamant family. She is embraced by the family and romanced by one of the sons, Izio, promising to marry him. When Germany occupies Poland, marking the start of World War II, the Diamants are forced into the Przemyśl ghetto. In addition to caring for her younger sister, Helena, only six when Fusia finds her all but abandoned back home after their parents are sent to a labor camp, Fusia becomes a lifeline for the Diamant family. First she smuggles food into the ghetto. After Izio dies in a labor camp, Fuzia, working with Izio’s younger brother, Max, works out a plan to help the remaining members and several others escape. She and Helen hide them—13 people in all—in increasingly precarious living situations. At one point, two nurses working at the German hospital across the street from their apartment are boarded with them, their SS boyfriends visiting regularly. The 13 hide in a cramped attic space, behind a false wall Max built. This fictionalized account of a true story reveals so many sides of human nature, from suspicion to annoyance to brutality to the false comfort of denying things are not as bad as they seem. But compassion is the resonant theme. Photographs and additional information about Fusia, Helen, and Max (whom Fusia married after the war) is included at the end of this tense, compelling work. (Age 13 and older)