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Two minutes. That's how long I had to get past this Nazi.He needed time to check my papers, inquire about my business inside the ghetto. Maybe he wanted a few seconds to flirt with a pretty Polish girl. Or for her to flirt back.But no more than two minutes. Any longer and he might realize my papers are forged. That it's Jewish blood in my veins, no matter how Aryan I look."Guten morgen." This one greeted me with a smile and a hand on my arm. I learned early not to smuggle anything inside the sleeves of my coat. You only had to be stupid once, and the game was over.This officer was younger than most, which I once believed would give me an advantage. I'd thought the younger ones would be more naive, and maybe they were. But they were also ambitious, eager to prove themselves, and fully aware that capturing someone like me could earn them an early promotion."Guten morgen," I replied in German, but with a perfect Polish accent. I smiled again, like we were old friends. Like I wasn't as willing to kill him as he was my people. "Wie geht's?" I didn't care how he was doing, on this morning or any other, but I asked because it kept his attention on my face rather than my bag.Like other ghettos throughout Poland, Tarnow Ghetto had been sealed since nearly the beginning of the war, cut off from the outside world. Cut off from Jews in other ghettos. This isolation gave total power to the German invaders. Power to control, to lie, and to kill.For the past three months, I'd worked as a courier for a resistance movement known as Akiva. My job was to break through that isolation, to warn the people, and to help them survive, if I could. But we were increasingly aware that time was running out.
