Resistance

Esther Karolinski is a young Jewish girl who joins Akiva. She is a few years younger than Chaya and is extremely shy, fearful, and inexperienced when she first arrives. From the outset, Chaya sees her as a liability and does not want to work with her. Esther’s background is initially unclear; eventually, however, Chaya and the readers learn that her brother died in the blitzkrieg on Warsaw and that her father joined the Judenrat to help the rest of her family survive. Esther’s father made deals with both the ZOB and the Germans, the former leading to Esther being smuggled out and joining the resistance. When Esther and Chaya arrive in Warsaw, one of the local women’s reactions to Esther suggests that Esther’s parents are now dead.

Although seemingly timid, Esther is nevertheless devoted to the cause of the resistance, deeply motivated as she is by the guilt she feels about her father’s actions and her desire to balance out the harm he has caused. Though her inexperience leads to some mistakes, it does not take away from her bravery. Despite Lodz being extremely dangerous for any kind of courier work, Esther is determined to attempt entry and help the people inside. During her time in Gestapo captivity, Esther does not give up any information, including her own name, even under pain of torture. After her rescue, she rallies to complete her mission in Warsaw. Once inside the ghetto, she ignores people’s suspicion of her and stays throughout the fight, eventually sacrificing her life as she helps others escape the ghetto.

Along with being brave, Esther is empathetic, sensitive, and wise. Her past experiences might have prompted her to think more deeply about things and not see the world in black and white. For example, she understands that Avraham, Sara, and Henryk’s response to the Nazi oppression is simply a different form of resistance than hers and Chaya’s. Faith is especially important to Esther; she affirms to Chaya that a life without faith is an empty one, and she even worries about having missed Sabbath on the night that Chaya was breaking her out of the Gestapo building. Esther introspects deeply about Faith and Morality in the Context of Violence, and she sees that the root of the Nazis’ antisemitism is not the Germans themselves but inter-religious hatred broadly. Esther’s character arc sees her moving from a meek, unsure young girl to a true hero. Her story and her bravery help open Chaya’s eyes to the different kinds of resistance that are possible.

Chaya’s family consists of her parents, her younger brother, Yitzchak, and her younger sister, Sara. Her father owned a shoe repair shop in Krakow before the blitzkrieg, while her mother was a homemaker. Following the German invasion and her family’s relocation to Podgorze, Chaya loses touch with her family for a couple of years. When Sara is eight years old, she is taken to Belzec, an extermination camp; Yitzchak disappears that same night.

This loss of their younger children deeply affects Chaya’s parents, and their spirit appears broken. Even after Chaya reunites with them at Podgorze, they do not regain much joy in life. Chaya’s mother in particular is so torn between the grief of losing Sara and the hope of Yitzchak’s return that she cannot care for her oldest daughter in the same way as before—something that deeply hurts Chaya and causes her to lean on Akiva and the resistance even more for strength and community. Chaya’s mother’s frailty influences her father’s decision not to attempt an escape, as he does not think her mother could make it; instead, Chaya’s parents console themselves with the false belief that they are safest inside the ghetto. Both of them are assumed to perish in the liquidation of the Podgorze Ghetto.

Although Chaya believes Yitzchak to be dead after learning of his disappearance, she discovers him to be alive and well in the Warsaw Ghetto years later. Yitzchak had attempted to follow Sara and break her out of the train to Belzec, but he was too late. He was then sheltered by different Polish families, though the last turned him over to the Gestapo, which sent him to Warsaw. Yitzchak displays the same bravery, spiritedness, and drive to survive as Chaya, having kept himself alive without much support since he left Podgorze at 12. He unhesitatingly joins the ZOB and fights in the uprising against the Germans, displaying deep loyalty to not just the cause but Chaya and Esther. Yitzchak is also wise for his years, telling Chaya about the importance of preserving art and culture in the face of the Nazis’ cruelty and dehumanization. The end of the book sees Yitzchak replacing Esther as Chaya’s companion and ally: The siblings escape the ghetto and join Rubin and the partisans to continue fighting the Nazis.