It was the summer of 1940. Military propaganda littered the streets; posters with swastikas and German slogans splashed across them in messy, unorganized paint were plastered onto the bricks, along with various graffiti expressing the extreme discomfort of the people. Billboards boasted loud colors, telling people to support France in the war!, Join the army!, and various other promotions to which no one in the town really paid much attention.

The once majestic, outstanding buildings that littered the streets now appeared so dull, so utterly lifeless; the entire town may as well have not existed at all. They had been defiled brick by brick, defaced by both those who were loyal to the Nazi party and those who were not. Bright red swastikas were oozing onto the sidewalks, an ironically justified type of graffiti that was illegal to even speak negatively about.

And to think France had been completely free only a week before.

The men were shrouded in thunder. They marched, perfectly in step, through the streets of Paris, a grotesque parade of monochromatic sheep that followed no one except their beloved shepherd, the Führer, who kept their ever-forward gaze clouded with ignorance, anti-Semitism, and hatred. Their boots resounded through the city, booming and rumbling like a rainstorm. To most of the French citizens that clogged the streets, their bodies pressed together in anticipation for the procession, they looked marvelous, like the soldiers in the cinema. To others, however, watching from the window of their dingy one-bedroom apartment, the men appeared as puppets on sharp German strings; like terrifying, brainwashed dolls.

Driven forward without resistance.

From the window of that dingy apartment, a woman and her son watched in horror as the Nazis marched through the streets they called home. Absently, she reached up with a shaky hand, and gripped the begrimed yellow star sewn into her sleeve, cursing under her breath and pulling the curtains shut with fervor.

They needed to leave, and they needed to leave now.

"Mon petit," she murmured to her son, who was still standing by the window, staring at the cheap fabric of the curtains. "Levi."

A soldier below stopped amidst his formation and turned, staring up at the window, and shouted something in German. Suddenly every Nazi halted and turned towards the pair in the apartment, as did the crowd, and they stared, and they laughed.

"Levi!"

The man at the window jolted suddenly, pulled violently from his daydream.

Just to be sure, he pulled the heavy curtain back just a bit and peeked outside, a sick sense of relief washing over him when he saw that the Germans still marched ever onward, paying no attention to the insects they crushed beneath their black, polished boots.

"Go get your father," The woman commanded, and the man obeyed, letting his pale fingertips release the curtains, finding it difficult to move them at all as they trembled.

"Oui, maman," He murmured, maneuvering through the narrow walkways and steep insteps of his apartment, which was hidden behind the apartment of another man, who had been gracious enough to hide them from the rest of Paris just a few weeks before, even though it had not come under Nazi occupation yet.

At least, it hadn't when they had moved in, and they hadn't expected it to for at least a month after this.

Levi's hands shook with anxiety, making it difficult for him to grasp the rusted brass doorknob to his father's study. He had to wrap his left (and equally unsteady) hand around the wrist of his right in order to steady himself enough to open the door, without knocking. Initially, his father was annoyed, and looked up, ready to reprimand his son for the interruption, but his words caught in his throat when he saw the expression of utter helplessness plastered onto his son's pallid face.

"Papa," Levi started, voice shaking just as much as his hands. "They've occupied Paris."

Levi's famly consisted of just the three of them: 19-year-old Levi, the son, Leah, the mother, and Jacob, the father. Initially they had owned a vineyard, but after they were forced to move in behind the apartment of a gracious Christian, they struggled to eat more than once a day.

Levi's family had lived in Bordeaux until 1939, when it was rumored to be turned into a German military outpost (and it had been, so thank God the family had escaped when they did), and their salvation had come in the form of a family friend who happened to have a studio apartment as an extension to his own. The hidden apartment was small, had no hot water, and only one window, but it was still better than a concentration camp. And for that, the family was thankful.

Up until then, they had been living quiet, devout lives. Of course, even with the Nazis there, their lives were still rather quiet and devout; only now, they would be killed for it.

"What?" Jacob rose slowly from his seat, staring into his son's face with utter disbelief. "What did you just say?"

"The Germans, Papa," Levi repeated, gripping the doorknob so hard that his knuckles turned white. "They're here."

Jacob was slow to move at first, passing Levi in the doorway and making his way towards the kitchen, where Leah stood, hunched over the sink, feeling more nauseous than she had ever felt in her life. Her husband went to her, tried to console her with gentle touches and hollow words, and from the hallway Levi could see that the intricate sentences his father wove seemed to drape over the both of them, and were meant more to soothe himself than to soothe his wife.

There was not a sound in the world more terrifying than the knock on the door that resounded through the tiny apartment just then. Everyone froze, staring in disbelief at the dreary slab of wood, the only thing protecting them from the segregation of the outside world, though they knew exactly who it was that stood behind it, because there was only one other person in the world aware of their existence.

Again, they knocked, hushed and rapid.

Finally, Levi moved, his frozen muscles giving him just enough leeway to step forward and unlock the door, swinging it open. There stood their salvation, Émile Chaput. The man who had taken them in when they were at their weakest.

The man was tall. Taller than Levi (then again, most people were), and he stepped in without an invitation. Jacob turned and opened his mouth to speak, but Émile silenced him with a raised hand. "I know," was all he said.

He stayed in their apartment for three and a half hours that night (an incredible risk on his part), telling the family that France had surrendered the Northern half of its country to Germany, and that Paris was included in that Northern half.

Just like that, the government had signed a treaty, and given up half of their country. Just like that, with nothing but black ink and a quill pen, their own country had signed away their lives.

Just like that.

Leah began to sob into her hands, and repeatedly, Levi had to leave the room to grab her a new handkerchief.

Émile assured them that he would keep them safe.

"I will get you out of here, to Lyon, in the free half of France," he promised. "I can have the tickets by tonight, and you can leave tomorrow morning. Bring nothing with you."

Jacob thanked him repeatedly, and embraced him one last time before the man left for several hours. An uncomfortable silence blanketed the apartment, and the family sat, crushed beneath the weight of trepidation, wondering which breath might be their last. When their salvation returned, none of them had moved from the spaces they were in when he had left. Émile opened their front door, tickets in hand, and watched as three heads turned towards him.

"I've got the tickets," He said, placing them on a table by the door and turning to leave. "You leave at six a.m."

It was Émile who took them to the train station the next morning as well. The three of them brought nothing, as they were instructed. Levi had taken a photo of his mother and father, and stuffed it in the breast pocket of his coat before they had left their apartment for the last time. His father had brought all the money they had (which was not much). The only thing the trio clutched in their shivering hands as they boarded the train that morning were their tickets and the fake papers that had been printed for them but six hours prior.

Levi stared at them as they sat in his lap on the way there. There was something written in German on his father's ticket, but it was a language that no one in their tiny family spoke. Levi found this odd, considering that Émile had no idea how to speak German (or so they thought), but no one else besides him could have written it.

As the tickets were punched and handed back, Jacob noticed the way Levi eyed the ticket in his hands, and asked if he wanted to trade.

"Yes, please," Replied his son, and that was the last thing Levi said to his father before he fell asleep.

The train did not go to Lyon. Instead, the train pulled into a station in Munich, Germany, and Levi was startled awake by the sound of barking dogs and German curses.

His father was the first one off of the train, and they shot him right in the head, continuing to shout as he fell dead onto the platform, and as Leah stumbled out next, screaming at the top of her lungs, hunched over the bloody, unrecognizable lump of flesh that had once belonged to her husband. She shouted horrible curses at them, in French, black eyes burning with a kind of rage that Levi had never seen before. The boy himself was still glued to the floor of the train, eyes wide, body trembling as the soldiers dragged his mother by her dark brown hair to a truck that waited just outside the station.

The last thing Levi saw was the swastika sewn into the sleeves of each soldier, and the yellow Star of David on his mother's chest, splattered with his father's blood, the brand of their religion staring him right in the face, mocking him.

A soldier at the edge of the platform pointed at Levi as the boy stumbled off of the train, hollering something that caused the rest of them to turn their heads and stare.

Then he ran. He ran until his chest felt like it was about to burst, until the poisonous German air around him was suffocated him, stuffing his lungs with discrimination and hatred until he could no longer breathe. Levi braced himself against a building, having stopped in an alleyway, amongst dumpsters and trash heaps somewhere in the middle of the city. Right where I belong, he thought.

He did not know the distance or speed at which he had been running, but he no longer heard the dogs barking behind him, or the gunshots that had scraped his heels. It was a miracle he hadn't been shot. His legs trembled, and he fell to his knees, leaning forward and vomiting until his stomach had nothing left to expel, and then once more for good measure.

His father was dead.

His mother was taken away and he had abandoned her.

The Jew stood once more, shaking like a beaten dog, and turned to exit the alley, to keep running, to find somewhere, anywhere to hide. But three boys that couldn't have been more than two years younger than him blocked his escape.

They spoke German. Words that the Jew did not understand. And then suddenly two of them were holding him down against the wall, ripping off his overcoat and slinging it over their shoulders. For a moment it looked as though they were about to leave him there like that, but then the tallest of the three spotted the mustard yellow patch that had been hidden beneath his overcoat, sewn onto his shirt. Though the brand was in French, it was still so obvious and recognizable it was a wonder they didn't just start shouting and alerting everyone of his existence right then and there. Instead, the boy took a hunting knife from the shaft of his boot, and stared at the yellow patch once more.

The Star of David.

He sneered.

Levi did not remember what happened next. He woke up in a bed, on his back, staring up at a dark, unfamiliar ceiling and wondering where the hell he was.

A dull pain in his forearm prompted him to sit up and examine it. And there, on his wrist, a bloody, swollen swastika had been carved into his skin, oozing puss and putrescence. The puss and discolored blood that leaked from the wounds carved into his flesh told him that it was infected, but there was nothing he could do about that. He could hardly feel his fingers, anyway.

The Jew swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up, wobbly on his feet. Where was he, and what was was he doing here? Where was his mother, his father?

He stumbled around for a few minutes before he found a flight of stairs, and upon them sat a woman with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. He stumbled back, frightened for a moment before she smiled kindly at him, and said something in German, to which he replied, "Je ne parle pas allemande."

"English?" Her accent was heavy, but he understood her just the same.

"Yes," he said, and waited for her to respond. She sat for a moment and thought, trying to bring the words she needed to the tip of her tongue.

"I found you in the street," she began, and suddenly, all of the memories of his arrival in Germany came flooding back to him, and he was unable to stop himself from turning and vomiting into a bucket that lay at his feet.

She found me in the street.

The woman didn't seem surprised at all by his reaction, and stayed on the stairs, standing this time. She was shorter than he was, by a few inches, but it was hard to tell when he was doubled over a bucket.

"My name is Petra," She said. "My husband and I found you and brought you here. Don't come upstairs, the soldiers might see you."

And that was when Levi realized that this woman was risking her life to save some dirty, homeless kid that she had found in an alley. He was still wearing his star, a faded yellow thing on his arm that read "Juif" like a cattle brand. She had known he was Jewish. Wanted. And yet she had still brought him out of the streets, and into her home, hiding him down below her floorboards, in a bomb shelter. How they had carried him all the way there so inconspicuously was beyond him.

Levi was still shaking when he attempted to stand again, trying to collect himself, and doing a fine job of pretending that he had until he stumbled and fell back onto his knees.

"Thank you," He said. "I'll leave tonight. She shot him a glare.

"No, you're not leaving at all. Do you have any idea what's waiting for you out there?"

"I've got a pretty good idea." He spit once more into the bucket and stood up again, keeping his footing his time.

"You're staying here, and that's final." She turned and stomped up the stairs before he had a chance to argue.

The door shut, and everything was black again.

And suddenly, Levi became acutely aware of just how alone he really was. There was no one here with him, no one to save him. No one to hold him close and console him, tell him it was going to be alright. No God. It was like a dream. It did not feel real.

He reached out into the darkness, his hand falling against the cold stone walls of the shelter, and staying there. He was alive. He remained alive, and safe, while his father was dead and his mother was taken to God knows where.

It made him ache, to know that he had abandoned her. Made his gut twist in agony and bring forth the urge to vomit again.

He hadn't even said goodbye.

Levi wanted to reach into his coat and take out the picture of his family, even though he could not see it. The realization that his coat and his picture were gone made a lump form in his throat. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his trousers instead and ran his fingers over his father's train ticket, tears forming at the corners of his eyes and cascading down his cheeks.

He was alone.

Or, perhaps, he wasn't.

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, bowing his head, and beginning to pray. His prayers were full of unanswerable questions, full of doubt and remorse and maybe just a tiny sliver of hatred. Levi had been nothing but obedient, nothing but loyal. Was this his reward?

"Do you even exist?" The question dripped from his lips like venom, and his voice echoed off of the stone walls that surrounded him, another reminder that the room was empty. "Do you even care?"

Then he lifted his head again, staring into black, waiting for Him to reply. The silence was louder than any answer he was hoping to receive.

Levi stood there, in the darkness, contemplating the power of God.

He could give, and He could take, and in this case, He had done both.