despairing their situation, sometimes begged them for poisoned food or a gun to end their misery, but the Macugowskis refused. Burack later recalled that they insisted, "As long as we are alive, we will save you.'' On one occasion, Jozef brought the family unleavened bread so they could observe the Jewish Passover. In 1945, the German High Command took over the Macugowskis house as a local headquarters and forced the Macugowskis out. According to Burack's recollection, the Radzas took out their prayer book, said Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and "all thanked God that we were going to die." However, the Macugowskis were able to convince the German soldiers that they should be allowed to stay on as the home's caretakers. Once or twice a week, after waiting until all the German soldiers were asleep, Jozef and Stephania were able to bring a small amount of supplies for the family. At one point, the Germans in the house were overheard discussing efforts to track down one remaining Jewish family rumored to still be hidden in town. Jozef was able to spread a rumor in a nearby town that this family had drowned in the Wista River while fleeing the Nazis, and the search was called off. Liberation and move to Israel In 1945, the town was liberated by the Red Army. The Radza family, at last, emerged from the crawlspace beneath the Macugowskis' home. It was the first time they had seen daylight in two and a half years, and it burned their eyes at first. Their legs were so wobbly that Soviet soldiers believed they were drunk and beat them, thinking they were hiding vodka. Their vocal cords had atrophied because they had not spoken above a whisper during their entire confinement. Jozef took the family to a town some miles away where no one knew them, and made them promise that they would never reveal who had protected them. Nearly six months after the war, the family was reunited with Rita, who had survived the camp at Bergen-Belsen. The Razdas eventually lost track of the Macugowskis. Burack was given false identity papers that declared her a war orphan and, at no more than 12 years old, was smuggled into the part of Palestine that would soon become the state of Israel. She was the only member of her family to emigrate to Israel. Her family remained