We Must Not Think of Ourselves: A Novel

At an Oneg Shabbat meeting, Ringelblum delivers the grim report that Germany has invaded Russia. They have also started building large poison chambers meant to exterminate large populations at once. To begin with, they are targeting older people, children, and people with disabilities. The Oneg Shabbat members are horrified and heartbroken. They wonder about the reasoning behind the Nazis’ actions, and Ringelblum points out that there is none. They cannot affect these actions or actors and must focus on things they can control, like recording their stories.

The group offers their observations for the week, which include the arrival of new refugees, a typhus outbreak, a performance of Macbeth put on by the Yiddish Shakespeare Society, an impromptu concert by the great pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman at a street café, and the births of three babies. Ringelblum asks Adam what poetry he has been teaching, and when he hears Adam’s logic of preparing the children for joy, Ringelblum suggests that Adam “might want to expand [his] repertoire” (158).

Adam arrives at his basement classroom one day to find a Nazi guard having sex with a blank-faced Szifra there. Alarmed at what the teenager is doing to help her family survive, Adam heads to inform her mother.