"Moral courage is a more rare commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence."
~Robert Francis Kennedy
Early on in the book, the main character, Irena, has the opportunity to return home before the war breaks out. She sends her family home a letter from school stating that she will not be returning home, and she is going to stay and help her country however she can in the war effort. Now the odds are she was going to be split from her family short after anyhow. But she did not know that. She had no idea of what was to become of her life and the war. Yet she still chose to stay away from her family because she felt it was the right thing to do. And she continues to risk her life to help others. They're at the point in the war where it is made known that anyone who is caught aiding the Jews is put up for the death penalty. Yet every night at work, she slips out and slides a tin of food under a fence into a ghetto. If she is caught doing this, she is dead. End of story. Yet she knows what she is doing is a good thing and she takes the risk. She is truly risking her life for her good morals; she is not in any type of real battle. She works in a kitchen. All she really has to do is her job, then go home and take car of herself and her sister. Yet she takes the time to make some kind of effort, with what she refers to as "a drop in the ocean." Although it's not going to make a huge difference and help every Jew in every ghetto; if it is helping just one person, that's all that matters to her.
