"For all we suffered, Odette," she says, "you and I were lucky to be in the Vendee."

She's right, I know.

But I couldn't be more surprised to hear Mama say it.

Summer comes, and Mama signs me up for a Jewish youth group.

One awful day, our leaders take us to see Drancy.

We wander around the empty camp.

Our footsteps echo off the concrete walls and floors.

The guide tells us people had to sleep on those floors.

How could they? I wonder.

It must have been so cold, so hard.

On an outside wall, I see letters scrawled by a child's hand.

One word: "Mama."

In the dirt, I spy a child's toothbrush.

I want to pick it up, but I don't dare.

Like Mama said, I'm one of the lucky ones, one of the survivors.

I never had to suffer like the owner of that toothbrush did.

Somehow I don't have the right even to touch it.

My friend Leon comes back to our neighborhood.

He was the tall, strong boy who lifted me onto his shoulders to see the gypsy's goat the day I got my orange from Marshal Petain.

He's eighteen now but so weak he can't even stand up.

Mama says he was in a camp where people were starved.

Leon, who always had a smile and friendly words to say to me, barely has the strength to speak.

I visit Leon every day after school.

Our visits are always the same.

He lifts the corner of his pillow and offers me a piece of the American gum he keeps there.

Then he asks me a question, the same one every day: "What did you learn in school today?"

I always save up something special to tell him.

He's so interested in my answers.

I can tell by the way his large, dark eyes follow mine.

I collect information for him the way I once collected mushrooms and berries in the Vendee.

Leon likes poetry, especially.

I memorize poems for him.

Though nobody says it, I know he'll die soon.

I want to bring him as much beauty as I can.

On my way to see Leon, I walk past Saint Joseph's Church.

I want to go in, but I can't.

Now that I am back in Paris, I must be a Jew again.

Being a Christian would make me a bad Jew.

I want to talk to God about this problem.

I want to ask him what I should do.

But even though God lives with many Jews, he doesn't live in my home.

I can't talk to my mother about God or prayer.

Now that we don't pretend to be Christians anymore, she doesn't want to hear anything about it.

When I arrive in Leon's room one day, it's even quieter than usual.

My heart beats quicker as I walk toward his bed.

Has death already come to take my friend?

No, Leon is still with me.

He doesn't speak, but he looks at me.

His eyes are larger than ever, a deeper and more urgent brown.

They seem to want to say something terribly important.

I want to ask them questions too, questions I never dared ask Leon out loud.

How terrible was it in the camp?

What's it like to die?

What does it mean to be a Jew?

Should I be one?

Leon's eyes read mine and answer me.

The camp was a nightmare.

Dying here, at home, is a gift.

To be a Jew is to know death and to love life.

Be a Jew like me.

What else can my eyes answer?

Yes, I will.

Of course I will.

I promise.

Before long, Leon's stare softens and his eyelids slip shut.

I close the door softly behind me.

Shwush.

Click.

My People.

One spring day, Europe's Lost and Found finds something to return to French Jews ...

a small box.

The box contains the ashes of Jews who died in terrible places, places called concentration camps.

No one really knows for sure, but they might be the ashes of our friends and relatives.

We will bury the box at Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Pere Lachaise is near where my cousins used to live.

But when I go there, I always think of Madame Marie.

She spent her Sundays at the cemetery.

She liked the tall trees, the fine statues, the prowling cats.

She paid her respects to the famous at Pere Lachaise, like the writers Balzac and Moliere.

Her favorites were the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the medieval lovers Abelard and Heloise.

But she never limited herself to them ... oh, no!

She liked to see that all the tombs were in order.

If she found one that wasn't, she tidied it.

Straightened an old photograph, lined it up on an altar, dusted cobwebs away with Monsieur Henri's handkerchief.

Cemeteries were my godmother's hobby.

But there are huge crowds of people at Pere Lachaise today ...

Madame Marie will not be here.

She stays away from crowds.

I miss her so much I ache inside.

Sometimes, in the middle of my days in Paris, I feel confused.

I still wonder who I really am and where I really belong!

In the city?

In the country?

At church?

Or at my Jewish youth group?

If only I could talk to my godmother about this.

But since she moved away, I don't see her as often as I would like.