The Safekeep

The first part of Chapter 12 is Eva’s diary entries, beginning in January of 1960. The entries reveal that Eva is Jewish and survived the Holocaust as a child. Her father was killed in the concentration camps, and her mother died after the war. Eva works low-paying factory jobs to make ends meet, lives in a tiny apartment, and fantasizes about reclaiming the large house that was stolen from her family when they were taken away to the camps. She remembers the cherished objects she left behind and wonders how they were treated by the family that stole the house. She learns that gentile families have been lying to surviving Jews about what was done with their belongings; they say that the objects were sold so that they can keep and use them. She has friends whose families were forced to sell their houses because mortgages went unpaid when they were in the camps.

One day, she hears a story about a girl who moved back into her stolen home under the pretense of being a maid and quietly stole back items while she worked there. Eva begins to plot to do the same, despite friends’ warnings that she won’t be able to pass for a gentile because of her “Jew face.