Goat in the Attic and Other Stories

“They don’t need a reason to shoot people.” Sophie Stach Virgilio heard that repeatedly before she was three. When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, she was almost a year old. During those years of Nazi occupation, she lived on a farm in Godowa, Poland, with her aunt and her aunt’s two children. The Gestapo visited their farm regularly, and these inspections were always terrifying because they never knew what the Nazis would do next. In Goat in the Attic and Other Stories: A Young Girl’s Memories of Hitler’s Occupation of Poland, she gives her own unique perspective as a child on Hitler’s occupation of Poland. Sophie Stach Virgilio also describes her traumatic departure from her beloved Mamusia and her difficult adjustment to life in America.