The villagers all felt sorry for fourteen-year-old Henri and little Sylvain: with their mother "in an asylum" and a "philandering" father, back in Antwerp, the two brothers had come to Belsele, in the Flemish countryside, "for a much needed fresh-air break." In fact, the intricate story of an unhappy family was spun to protect the two Jewish boys, Hirsch and Salomon, from deportation while they were waiting out the German occupation of Belgium. Hirsch Grunstein's memoir chronicles the events leading up to the boys' escape from Antwerp, his long stretch in hiding (much of it alone, in silence), his eventual capture by the Flemish SS, and the dramatic operation by the Belgian resistance that saved him and scores of other children from certain death. Woven into the riveting account of how he, his family and their rescuers survived, are the teenager's wrenching interpretations of the Psalms.