Over the years we have published several “holocaust” stories by Ida Fink. This is the title story of the book from which they came. A woman who had watched as men from her Polish village were rounded up and ostensibly taken away to labor camps reflects that, for those traumatized by war or disaster, time is not measured in months and years but by actions and events. Sadly, there are far too many people in the world today forced to measure time in the same way. Themes include childhood innocence, fear, deception, self-delusion, atrocity.

Set in Poland during the second world-war, this story by Ida_Fink contrasts the freshness of a peaceful spring morning with the brutality of the holocaust. Knowing what is coming but powerless to do anything, a Jewish couple review their life choices after waking to the sound of trucks. As they and their five-year-old daughter are marched through the streets towards the execution field, the father tells his daughter to flee into a crowd. She is shot, and he must carry her dead, blood-soaked body the rest of the way. Themes include despair, acceptance. choices and consequences, guilt, atrocity, insensitivity.