"They won't kill everyone in the ghetto right away," he continues, his voice matter-of-fact. "They still need workers. But not for long. After all, they have us Poles to work for them, don't they?" He paused then, and looked at me. It was frozen like Polish winter. It was cold right through into my bones. "You know Miriam," Mr. Kraszenski suggested, "you could be one of us." With her blue eyes and blonde hair, Marisa could be a Polish Christian girl. But living a lie can also be a horrible burden for a young woman to bear. Writing in the same dramatic style as her other outsanding Holocaust stories, Carol Matas has outdone herself with this realistic, poignant story set in World War II Poland and Germany.