"Life is cruel....Life is so cruel....We cry for the ones we lose and continue to live. We eat, sleep, hope, dream, laught, love, and hate. We do not turn to stone and stop feeling. We suffer pain and sorrow and go on living. But there must be a limit. How much can we endure and still say, life must go on."
Could you take on the responsibility of being a legal guardian at the age of sixteen, after your best friend just betrayed you and your Jewish friends to go work for Hitler in the Volksdeutshe. For Riva, after her mother is taken away by the Nazi's she becomes the "mother" of her 3 brothers, Moishele, Motele and Laibele. Without a father in the picture, Riva is forced to give up her childhood, and when sickness, famine and dishonesty strike the Lodz Ghetto, Riva finds herself helping other Jews from her ghetto, well the ones that haven't been deported yet.