No Pretty Pictures

Anita and her brother face constant displacement. As the threatening Nazis are seemingly everywhere, Anita and her brother have to move around a lot. Displacement defines their lives, and the theme emerges within the first two pages of the Poland section when their dad suddenly leaves. His departure foreshadows the various departures of Anita, her brother, and Niania. They go from Krakow to Lapanow, where Anita says, “We began to hear rumors of roundups in nearby villages. It was just as it had been in Krakow” (19). Anita feels safe with Niania in her village, but her mom arrives and incidentally forces them back to Krakow, where events uproot them multiple times. They sneak into the ghetto, have to hide in crowded spaces once there, and then sneak out. When Niania gets them into a convent run by nuns, Anita says, “Until the war came to an end, I wanted everything to stay as it was right now” (63). Stability eludes Anita, and she and her brother move from a prison to a series of concentration camps.