The Painted Bird

The boy is taken in by a peasant in a poor village. When the Germans come to collect food, the peasant hides the boy in a well-disguised cellar. During mushroom season the peasants take to the forest to gather their harvest; fearing he’ll be turned over to the Germans for housing a Gypsy, the peasant shaves the boy’s dark hair.

Railroad tracks run through the forest. The peasants line up and wave cheerfully at the Jews and Gypsies heading to concentration camps. The peasants hear rumors about the camps, how the bodies are burned and how the Germans take the Jews’ gold teeth and shave their hair for mattress stuffing. The peasants believe the Germans are God’s “instrument of justice,” and that the Jews are finally receiving God’s punishment “for refuting the only True Faith, for mercilessly killing Christian babies and drinking their blood” (96). They look at the boy with suspicion, telling him that he, too, will burn one day. Worried, the boy wonders whether only dark-haired people are punished by God.

Occasionally people throw children from the train in an attempt to save them, or crawl through the floor to their deaths.