Notes
Jankele Kuperblum at eight had already left home to work, returned to his native village to find his family deported as Jews. The Ukrainian Mrs. Paizak took him in for a time, until the danger of reprisal became too great and he was forced to wander from farm to farm seeking food and shelter, hiding his identity (and his private parts) as a Jew. But ""something within me urged me not to forget who I was, where I was born, who my mother and father were."" Jankele received kindness, endured cruelty, always under the threat of discovery. The end of the war brought survival guilt; he tried to kill himself. He made his way to Dublin, found distant relatives who helped a little, and registered with a last hope: ""Jankele Kuperblum is alive."" A story of survival told without self pity, with a determination to live perhaps more properly termed girls, the more moving therefore.
