I'm sooo sorry for not updating sooner, just schoolwork and all that. I'll try to update as soon as I can. O.k. I checked the names for a last name for Jacob and Daniel and can't find any. Can you help? Just write in the reviews something like last name:_ Could you please? Oh btw I'm changing Jacob's name into Jakob it is more commonly spelt that way, then, in German. O right and this is an update, if you read it before, his name was Jacob but Jakob is the German way it is written so that's why I changed him. Chapter 4 will be in a few days, or weeks (depends), time. Btw if I we get to 20 reviews the 20th reviewer will be mentioned in my story! Start reviewing!

Chapter Three

Jakob's POV

1941

Verse 13:11 "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up my childish ways." In roughly twenty minutes, Daniel and I are going to head towards the local market. That's where we agreed to meet Stefan and Henree.

August is here and the leaves are falling in orange, red and brown swirls, dust escaping in their midst. The cobbled streets are huddled together, their rooftops arching forward, as if to cover the city from sunlight. Frankfurt is all to ourselves, we can take whatever we like, just like the Germans took everything from us. Us, as in Daniel and I. Henree and Stefan, well - they just make me; wary.

We met them when Daniel was stupid enough to leave his Star of David necklace over his coat. Before he could shove underneath his shirt collar, two men and a German Shepherd stepped forward, blocking Daniel's way. Easily passing my height by at least a head and almost twice my size, the first man was a formidable foe. The second man was around my height, with soft light brown hair and dazzling bright blue eyes, he seemed a little queer, with an aloof demeanor; as if he didn't quite care where he was standing. The taller one leaned forward until his head was my height and then recited quietly, almost in a whisper, " Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha'olam, asher kideshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu likboa' mezuzah1," then said very quietly, "We know both of your names – you are Daniel and Jakob.

I instantly panicked, how did they know that we were Jews? How did they know our names? How did I let this happen? I grabbed Daniel's hand and tugged him the other way towards a darkened alleyway. They both immediately came running behind us, their dog in tow, and the first then said, "No, you don't understand," hands out forward, showing us that he was unarmed anon started to explain, "We heard of Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski and of your uncle, Avraham. Please let us prove to you that we mean you no harm."

To prove what he meant, he pushed me to the main square, right before I punched him square in the face though, a German soldier came up to us and commanded harshly, "Papers." Ugh, great. I snatched the stolen identity papers from Daniel's hands and shoved it to up the German's face, quite hard too; I hoped it hurt him.

"Watch it!" he spat. I waited impatiently for him to finish, get going, get going, I kept telling myself. I wasn't even scared though, no one around here knew we were both Jewish, and I could've stabbed the German if he was too curious, then hide the body. I kept my impatient role, though, maybe then he'll think we were actually just "normal" citizens, nothing to worry about, let alone shoot at.

But then, he frowned and called two more soldiers to join him. Great, I saw Daniel stiffen and wished that I could somehow tell him to act calm. As long as they don't recognize us, we'll be fine. I could still hear the men who followed us breathing deeply. They betrayed no emotion, both standing far enough to seem inconspicuous. Oh how much I wanted to beat up the man who shoved us, give him a bloody nose and a broken arm. But no matter how many punches I'd throw, he will win. He's a true beast.

Those two soldiers were just as mean as the first and they, too, looked at the papers and frowned. One even took out a small bottle of what smelled like whisky and took a sip, his bright eyes still peeled on our papers. "This is telling us your names are Max and Katrina Baum," he pointed his gun at us and said, "Move."

That was when I began to panic. Godamnit! But then, as if he fell out of the sky, sent by God, the smaller man chuckled and raised his palm.

"Lukas, you fool!" he mused, his voice soft and quiet, but influential – this man could change the minds of millions if he'd only had been given the chance, "you said you checked the papers before we left the house!" Then as if he suddenly noticed the soldier, he said, almost apologetically, "Wir sind sehr traurig, lassen uns die wirklichen Papiere erhalten2!"

The soldiers were a bit afraid of the man's much larger companion, but, after hearing his enticing voice and sensing his charisma, they laughed and one of the three replied, "Lass uns gehen3. What a fool! Mixed his papers with his mother's!" They laughed at Daniel all the way back to their positions.

Daniel cussed at the Nazis under his breath, then sighed gratefully and said, "Thank you, you have no idea how much we owe you both. What can we do for you?" The smaller man abruptly erased that gullible, jeering grin off his face, paused, and scratched the shepherd's fur behind its ears.

"Just get us out to your Uncle's secret base; that's all we want." He calmly replied. I shot Daniel an exasperated look.

He just shrugged and whispered to me, "they saved our backs back there, we owe them this much."

"They are the ones who put us at risk in the first place!" I hissed, but Daniel didn't seem to hear me.

From then on we became allies, no matter how suspicious I was of them, I couldn't just leave Daniel alone with them. Since what happened to our father and mother, I didn't want us to separate, ever.

The smaller man told us his name was Stefan and shook both our hands. He introduced us to his companion, Henree, and Henree's dog, Bruno and began to tell us where they were from.

He told us that he was a Polish soldier who had met Henree in Paris, the same month when the Germans began to attack France. Stefan was an experienced soldier from before the war and that was the reason he was sent to France in the first place. Stefan mentioned that he and Henree fled from the battle in fear for their lives, in search for a place to hide until the war ended, and found themselves hearing stories about our uncle Avraham and his retaliation group up north in Russia.

His sparkling eyes were completely hypnotizing, making him all the more persuasive. They seemed to look like two, pure, zircon gemstones. When I told him what his eyes reminded me of, he quoted; "Zircon provides the wearer with wisdom, honor and riches," and with a, "I guess that doesn't apply to me, ehh?" his laughter broke out and echoed down the alley we were walking in. I begged him to stop. We must had surely draw attention to ourselves.

He was wrong; if a colour of a gemstone could provide you with anything good, then it brought Stefan the ability to know if anyone was lying to him. And that was something.

Henree was a very muscular man, and owned a big golden shepherd with black streaks. His face sported a pretty sharp nose, but if examined upon carefully, it was absolutely obvious that his nose was broken at least once or twice throughout his lifetime. He looks like a he used to be an illegal fighter back in the day butdidn't say anything about his past except what made Stefan and himself come up to Germany. He had cropped salt and pepper hair and sharp cheek bones, housing slanted, dark brown, eyes – almost like an oriental foreigner. Henree had a faint French accent but with a bit of Russian twist into it too.

Was he Russian? Or was he actually telling the truth? I didn't trust anyone, especially people I had just met, but there was something trustworthy about both of them; something that made me agree to their plans, something that made Daniel trust them. I hope to God they won't betray us.

Thinking of God, I was just reading a Bible that I found in the place we were staying in. I should think of a better word than staying. Using. Yes, using, because breaking into an apartment to use the shower, steal some food and clothes is not called staying.

Back to the Bible, verse 13:11 reminded me that I haven't finished Shlomi's story. Fine then, back to October, 1935, right after the fight.

I entered the house and let the door close itself shut after kissing the mezuzah, then called to anyone within hearing range, "Shalom, I'm here!" I'd stopped saying "I'm home" since hate began churning up around us.

I passed the hall and took my shoes off before entering the living room. The living room opened up to the kitchen, so that only a counter blocked the way to the oven, fridge and the wooden dining table. My little brother, Daniel, was lying on the carpet. Stomach flat on the carpeted floor, with elbows propped up, he was listening to father tell him stories of the Great War. Father was seated in his usual leather armchair, which was next to the old and wooden fireplace. Of course it was unlit, as it always was these days. Father was telling one story that I knew off by heart, when I came in the room.

"There you are Jakob," my father said in his deep voice, his watchful brown eyes resting on me. His genes made him appear to be thin, but he really wasn't. His body was muscular and in shape, his skin fairly pale.

He used to be an athletic man, my father, but because of a stray bullet that he caught in the leg, Father had been using crutches ever since. He had started to get better at walking and could even jog once in a while, but his doctor warned him not to put too much weight on his leg, in fear of amputation.

Once, when the doctor said that he should stretch his muscles a bit, my father cross-country skied with me in Switzerland and beat me to every checkpoint we crossed. Like I said, my father was a very athletic man.

My father was an intelligent man, and since he has been all around Europe he knew six different languages – German, French, Russian, Norwegian, English and Polish and was capable of understanding three more – Swedish, Danish and Dutch.

My father had taught me to speak French, Polish and some English, and had taught Daniel Norwegian, English and Russian. Daniel was the more perceptive son, being able to perfect all of the languages our father taught him, unlike myself. Of course, since we were German, our mother tongue was German as well.

"Shalom, son," he greeted and I went over to hug him. He clapped me on the back and then held my head with his calloused hands, observant.

Touching right beneath my left eye he asked in his familiar, rich voice, "What happened?" he wasn't betraying any emotion except for wariness. I sighed and answered back.

"Shlomi is a wild one." Then I went to mother, who gasped when my face caught the dim light.

"Tell me what happened," she demanded, then hurriedly picked up a rubbery plastic bag and threw some ice from the freezer into it. She then washed the rubbery bag in ice cold water from the bleached metal sink and motioned me forward to be treated. What Shlomi did, was probably worse than I've imagined.

When he had thrown those punches at me, they barely hurt. I could only feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins, the strength of my muscles when I smashed him easily to the wall. It was then that I started to acknowledge adrenaline's motive, and use it as an advantage.

Mother started to gently rub the place where I was hit with the piece of ice cold rubbery plastic, whilst Daniel came over to get a good look. He too, gasped when he saw me, but when I glanced at him I understood that he wasn't concerned or sad, his face was full of wonder. Maybe he was awed by my ability not to cry - I didn't cry because it didn't hurt at all, but they didn't know that -, maybe not.

With that same soft light brown, almost dark blonde, hair, unkempt like mine, he looked a bit like how I used to look like when I was his age. When I was eleven, I was the same height and weight as him. But with him being less muscular, less athletic, more-innocent looking and still having baby fat around his cheeks and under his chin, he seemed so much younger than eleven.

There were some other physical appearances that made us look more like brothers and less like twins. My brother had blue eyes, not brown like mine, I was taller and a bit darker looking than him, having browned skin, whilst his skin was fairer, lighter.

Mother had light brown hair and dazzling hazel eyes, which had begun to become wary throught they years.

"What'd he do?" Daniel asked, his bright blue eyes still wide with wonder.

"Punched me," I answered halfheartedly.

"Then why do you have two bruises?" he insisted, I really did have two bruises, one under my eye and one below my right ear. Now I knew why he was so awed. His eyes were full of wonder that somebody, even the thin Shlomi, could make me bruise. I rolled my eyes at that. Apparently Daniel wanted to hear for himself that Shlomi beat me up. That, of course, was untrue, because in a fair fight I would've had Shlomi at my mercy. But I would never have fought Shlomi, not even in a fair fight.

I didn't take his bait, I didn't even budge.

"Because he punched me twice," I hedged.

Daniel gave up, sighed, then said, "Why?"

"Because he thought I thought he wasn't capable of handling Erik," I answered, not knowing how to break it to them about him deporting himself.

"Why did he take it so seriously?" Daniel inquired, confused.

"He took it seriously because," I sighed and continued when all of them, even mother was holding the bag still, looking at me expectantly, "because," I sighed again, deeper this time," because he wants to send a letter requesting to be deported with his Ma and Erik."

Mother gasped; father suspired an ever deeper sigh than the one I took; but Daniel's eyebrows knitted together, shaping into a confused frown. How much I knew that look. Whenever Daniel or I was confused our eyebrows would form that familiar shape whilst we will try to understand what's going on.

Apparently Daniel just couldn't grasp what I was telling him. He couldn't wrap his mind around the concept that his best friend's older brother (or his older brother's best friend, whichever way you put it) will go to Auschwitz and never come back.

He couldn't visualize his best friend's younger brother, only six, being murdered by some German kid's dad or uncle. The poor boy will maybe be brutally killed out in the open, watched by a policeman who will do nothing after it was done.

Hushed to silence by the police who would lie and say it was an accident. Or maybe they won't even bother to send a letter to the boy's home. Shot or strangled or burned alive. No one will absolutely be sure what had happened to him except for the fact that he went to Auschwitz and never came back. One of these things will happen to this little boy with dimples and innocent brown eyes. Poisoned or suffocated or starved.

Maybe it was because nature was protecting Daniel from the truth. I would personally think it would be better if I was a child when all this happened, that I wouldn't know the truth. Then, maybe, nature could have saved my mind, and Shlomi's, from the brutal, merciless truth too.

I didn't want to break the truth to him. Didn't want to be the one who would cause him pain and steal away his childhood, making him visualize all those horrible things that have happened back then. But of course I had to tell him, we all had to sometime, and who would have told him the truth if I wasn't there to tell him?

"What? I don't get it," he questioned and, dumbfounded, admitted the already-known truth. Poor Daniel, so young, so innocent and already he is pushed out of his childhood by just a couple of sentences.

I caught father's eye and silently pleaded him to do it. But of course I had to be the one to do it. Why? Anon that night, when we both were alone, he told me that this was one of the things only an older sibling could tell to their younger sibling.

"Daniel, Shlomi is going to go with Erik and his Ma to Auschwitz," I told him as carefully as possible, trying to compose myself so my voice won't break, but of course it did.

"So?" he hesitantly asked right after he thought it over, again. He knew something was wrong but not sure what it was. His childhood tried to protect him as much as possible but his burning curiosity won the furious battle between innocence and knowledge, childhood and adulthood, life and death. I hated myself for doing this to him. I wanted innocence to win. But if it will, then death will too.

"So, they're not coming back." I painfully went on, then added, "They won't be able to."

"Why? What does that mean?" Was it really just his childhood or himself, knowing, unconsciously, that he didn't want to know? That it were better if he was left in the dark.

But, it's like when people see a horror film. You know something terrible is going to transpire, and so you sit transfixed, holding your breath, waiting for the inevitable to happen.

This, exactly, is the same situation. I could tell that he held his breath then, and saw him stand, rock still, until I told him, rather much as emotionless as when a grey man talks to grey stone, the horrible truth.

"They won't make it; they'll be murdered in cold blood."

I heard Daniel letting out his held breath in one long, ragged movement of his throat, swirling out of his mouth and into the stiff air. As if the air was waiting for something else to occur. I could almost hear the click in his brain when he understood what I meant.

"Oh," one tear slid down from his eye to his chin. Two more followed the first but only I saw these because, right when they fell and before Daniel could take another breath, mother ran over to him and squeezed him with one of her loving hugs, muttering on and on as if it will never end, "My baby, my baby, it's fine, it'll be fine, fine, fine." Mother wasn't a big lady, but she used to be bigger than Daniel, of yore.

He hugged back and then turned to look at me, as if waiting for permission for something. I kept on looking at him, but I couldn't remember what emotion was betraying me. Was it fear? Was it sadness? Was it anguish? Was it uselessness? Or was it emotionless, just as my voice?

Whatever he found must've been written all over my face, because then he hugged mother again by the waist and began to cry openly, piercing the stiff air. Mother started to sob a bit too, if I remember correctly.

I couldn't just watch them without crying myself. So, before a tear could appear, I turned my back on them and went to sit on the carpet next to father. He looked at me briefly with his deep brown eyes, burning from some emotion I couldn't recognize (and yet, 'til this day I do not know what he felt erewhile), he then looked at the embracing couple and said gravely, "Dvora, Jakob's bruise is hurting again, he told me."

I quickly looked up at him, confusion and surprise radiating from my eyes, for I had not told him a thing. At that brief moment that he looked back at me I think I imagined him say, "To keep him strong," but I can never be sure. He never said a word.

Daniel looked at me, tear-welled, and, embarrassed, darted upstairs, as. Why should he be embarrassed? I thought to myself, if I were him, it would not even cross my mind to ask permission from my older brother to cry. Well at least it's a good thing he grew up and started to think for himself.

Mother told me to come so she could wipe my bruise once more, when I turned to catch father's eye again. He seemed to tell me to go with it so I did, for father. I inwardly scoffed at the fact that people actually rub bruises with ice. If it doesn't bleed, you shouldn't take care of it.

My mother fussed over the bruises and made sure Daniel (who came an hour late for dinner, tear-welled and sad) and I ate dinner, until late evening when the sky was a deep dark blue and the stars started to shine. I told her them that I was tired, and exited to my bedroom.

I sobbed soundlessly that night. Shlomi, what are we going to do with you? You better come back safe and sound. Why do you do this to yourself? Do you want to get killed? I kept on thinking these unanswerable questions to myself that night. Until, tear after tear, I gave up thinking and patiently waited for unconsciousness to take hold of me.

So? How was it? This one is longer than the other two, I just wanted you to understand a bit about Henree and Stefan before I start the action. By the way I'll ask again, can you help me find them a last name? It needs to be German and Jewish, Jewish American names work too (because a lot of Jews moved to America after WW2) Review! Feed the poor dawg a bone! The quote was used for effect on the chapter, would you like a quote for every chapter? Or should I just stick to my usual style? REVIEW!

Translations:

1We're very sorry, let us get the real papers.(In German)

2Let's go.(In German)