She pins a note to the baby’s shirt: Rachel, my love. Live!

LIVE! BY UTE CARSON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 47

It is 1942. Miriam leans against a wall of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Daily roundups and deportations have depleted the population and it is rumored that soon the ghetto will be burned down. All checkpoints are heavily guarded and anyone attempting to escape is shot on the spot.

Hunger and exhaustion have wasted Miriam’s body. Her precious three-month-old daughter Rachel has sucked her breasts dry. Miriam presses the sleeping child to her heart one last time and wets her face with a flood of tears. The sedative for her daughter has cost Miriam the last keepsake from her grandparents, a gold pendant with a crest of tiny diamonds.

She pins a note to the baby’s shirt: Rachel, my love. Live!

Then she wraps the infant firmly between two cushions, lashes them together with a scarf and heaves them with the last of her strength over the wires atop the wall.

Miriam sinks to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. An SS man who has watched from acro…