Birds become a central symbol from the first chapter of the memoir, when Irena and her sisters nurse a wounded stork back to health, and bird imagery maintains an important role until the final page of the book. Most importantly, Irena sees herself as a bird throughout the memoir, starting off as “a fledgling pushed from its nest,” losing her innocent girlhood too early in the midst of war. By the end of the memoir she has “been forced to learn how to fly” (265).

When she is raped by Russian soldiers early on in the memoir, Irena imagines she’s a bird “trying to fly off” (34), but at this point she is unable to fly free and escape. She continues to see herself as a trapped bird throughout the early years of the war; when threatened by German soldiers, she says “my heart thrashed like a netted bird” (70). However, as Irena becomes bolder and more courageous in her efforts to save her friends, she comes ever closer to freeing herself from the net of war—thus Part Two of the book is titled “Finding Wings.” When the war ends, and she is reunited with the people she’s saved, Irena feels like “a mother hen who finally has all her chicks together again” (251).