Free Hiding Edith by Kathy Kacer

packed their gear for the last time and headed back to Moissac. Edith was sad to see the camping trip end. It had been an adventure that she would always remember. Sarah had been right — they had remained safe and had had fun. In the forest, Edith had actually forgotten that soldiers were nearby, looking for Jews. She had forgotten that there was any danger.
    As soon as the children arrived back at the house, Edith went looking for Gaston. She found him in his room unpacking a few of his belongings.
    “Oh, Gaston, I was so worried about you!” Edith squeezed her brother tightly. “Shatta said you were hiding with a family. Were they kind to you?”
    Gaston nodded. “I had to pretend I was their son, in case soldiers came. They never did, but I still had to pretend. I had to call the people Maman and Papa. That was hard, but if I closed my eyes and pretended Mutti was there, then I could do it.”
    “You’re very brave, Gaston. Mutti would be proud of you — Papa too.”
    On the way back to her house, Edith found Eric in the woodworking shop.
    “I told you we’d be fine,” he said.
    “What happened?” Edith asked. “Did the soldiers come?”
    “Yes,” he said. “Not long after you left. There had to have been ten or twenty of them on patrol. They pounded on the doors.The cook answered and said that everyone was gone. Of course, she didn’t say anything about the fact that we are all Jews here. She just said it was a boarding home for children, and everyone was away for a few days. The soldiers came in, anyway. By then, we were hidden away. Three in the attic behind a trap door, and the rest here behind that stack of wood.” Eric pointed to a large wall of lumber piled from floor to ceiling. Sure enough, there was a small cubbyhole behind it, under a hidden staircase, just large enough to accommodate three or four boys. It could be barricaded and made invisible by stacking wood in front of it.
    “How long did you hide?” Edith asked, picturing the boys crowded inside the small space.
    Eric shrugged. “Two, maybe three hours. The soldiers came back several times.” He smiled cunningly. “I guess they didn’t believe the cook, and they wanted to surprise us. But we made it to our safe places each time.”
    Eric made it sound so simple, like playing a game. He could have said, “Oh yes, we just played hide-and-seek,” instead of “Oh yes, we just hid from the Nazis.” Maybe for Eric and some of the others, avoiding capture and outsmarting the Nazis really was an adventure. But for Edith, fear and uncertainty never went away. Danger was always just around the corner, waiting to get her if she let her guard down. She had to stay watchful and alert. That was the only way she was going to survive.

CHAPTER 15
August 1943 The House Is Closing
    Within a few days, almost in spite of herself, Edith settled back into the house routines. With school out for the summer, the days passed peacefully, with a lazy summer energy. There was even a marriage for two of the group leaders. At the wedding dinner, Eric and the other photographers presented the newlyweds with a photo album of pictures taken during the ceremony. It wasn’t quite a banquet — rationing and food restrictions saw to that — but the feeling in the house was optimistic, even hopeful. “Perhaps the war is ending,” the children whispered. “Maybe our parents will come for us soon.”
    Edith prayed every night that Mutti would come. And when she visited Gaston, she pretended it would happen for sure. But in her heart, she believed differently. She had been led to think that she would be safe too many times. This time she was not going to be so easily fooled. So, when Shatta and Bouli called an emergency meeting in August 1943 to announce the closing of the house, Edith was not surprised, just very sad.

    “Conditions are worsening in France,” Shatta began. “It is no longer safe for all of you to be here.”
    The room pulsed with the