It is there, deep in the Polish forest, that she is found by a woodcutter's wife, a kind, modest woman who likes to watch the messages and the shouts of people on the trains without knowing what is happening to them and who has always wanted to have a child.

She sees the screaming child and its fine scarf as a gift from God - her "little cargo", as she calls it - and takes it home with her, where she has an argument with her husband.

He describes the parents as "heartless" and "the ones who killed God", and refuses to keep the child, not least because of the death penalty that threatens anyone who shelters a Jew.

Steven G. Kellman wrote for Tablet, "Since we know that these genocidal horrors did occur, that—hard as it is to believe—there were in fact cargo trains that transported human beings to extermination camps, we are forced to read Grumberg's indelible 'fairy tale' as accurate history.

"[2] Raphaëlle Leyris of Le Monde wrote that the narrative's "acerbic tenderness for its characters prevents it from falling into simple pastiche".