Number the Stars: Chapters 1–4

His Danish was very poor. Three years, Annemarie thought with contempt. Three years they’ve been in our country, and still they can’t speak our language.

And don’t run. You look like hoodlums when you run.

There had been no real coffee in Copenhagen since the beginning of the Nazi occupation.

But Annemarie heard Mama and Papa talk, sometimes at night, about the news they received that way: news of sabotage against the Nazis, bombs hidden and exploded in the factories that produced war materials, and industrial railroad lines damaged so that the goods couldn’t be transported.

The Resistance fighters were Danish people — no one knew who, because they were very secret — who were determined to bring harm to the Nazis however they could.

She glanced through the window, down to the street corner where the soldiers stood, their faces impassive beneath the metal helmets.

Mama had been crocheting that evening three years ago: the lacy edging of a pillowcase, part of Lise’s trousseau.

Like the other families in their building, the Johansens had opened the old chimney and installed a little stove to use for heat when they could find coal to burn. Mama used it too, sometimes, for cooking, because electricity was rationed now.

It is their way of tormenting. For some reason, they want to torment Jewish people.

Oh, there were the soldiers; that was true. And the courageous Resistance leaders, who sometimes lost their lives; that was true, too.

“All right, Scarlett, I’m coming,” Ellen replied in a sophisticated voice.

Mama followed her with an exasperated look and set a package down on the table.

Annemarie grinned and walked her Scarlett toward the chair that Ellen had designated as Tivoli.

“I did too,” she said belligerently.

It had made Annemarie feel sad and proud, too, to picture the tall, aging king, perhaps with tears in his blue eyes, as he looked at the remains of his small navy, which now lay submerged and broken in the harbor.