Life in Hiding

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"We went into hiding in our own apartment. The windows had been darkened; blankets and sheets had been shoved under the door so no sound would come out. That is where I spent the next sixteen months of my life, in that apartment building. My mother chose the smallest room in the house which was my parents' library. She chose it because it was the smallest room in the house, but it was also the room that was closest to the bathroom. So when the water worked-- because of the bombings and things like that-- she put a lot of water in me so I was full. The staple food of Romania is a corn meal-based concoction called marmaliga, and that is what we ate when we could get it."