In January 1943, a mother named Rosa Goldstein stood at the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto and kissed her daughter Leah goodbye. Leah was three years old. Rosa had spent six months teaching Leah to respond to a false name, to stop crying on command, to smile at German soldiers, and to never — never — call out Mama in public.
Rosa gave Leah to a Polish neighbor who agreed to smuggle her to a Catholic orphanage in Lublin. Rosa stood at the gate and watched her daughter walk away. Leah turned back once, opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She had been taught well.
Rosa was deported to Treblinka three weeks later. Leah survived. She was raised by the neighbor, who told her only that her mother had died before the war Leah never knew she was Jewish until she was 18 years old, when the neighbor finally gave her Rosa's letter. In it, she wrote: I taught you to forget me so that you could live. But I hope you will remember that I loved you more than my own life. You will always have been my daughter.