sometimes exaggerates which shows that she is developing more adult critical thinking skills and is starting to leave childhood behind. As she exits the bathroom to rejoin her family she is nervous about running into other people who she may feel uncomfortable with. She feels that she was right about her worries on her journey from New Rochelle to see her grandparents for Passover Seder in the Bronx. She had said that she didn't want to visit her grandparents, guessing that she and her brother Aaron would be the only children there. She had been worried about being bored as the grown ups joked in Yiddish and told the children how much they'd grown.

Hannah goes back into the sitting room but no one seems to acknowledge her as they are huddled around Grandpa who is watching television. He angrily pushes his fist towards the television because he sees pictures of the Nazis and concentration camp victims. Everyone can see his wartime number tattoo as he has rolled up his sleeve on his left arm. Aunt Eva starts to apologize for him but Hannah is very familiar with his volatile reactions to the war. She even remembers being fascinated by his camp tattoo when she was was a little girl. She had even made a tattoo of her own in blue ballpoint ink on her arm, hoping he would like it. However he had frightened her with his angry response and his shouting had caused her to have bad dreams. Only having a child's understanding of his trauma, Hannah has found herself unable to forgive him for his verbal attack on her. She then finds herself critical of both of her aunts as Eva's apologies seem pointless.

In The Devil's Arithmetic, Eva is Hannah's great aunt. Specifically, she is the sister of her paternal grandfather, Grandpa Will. Aunt Eva is Hannah's favorite relative at the Seder, because she shows more attention to Hannah than she does to Hannah's younger brother Aaron. Furthermore, Eva is particularly close with her nephew, Hannah's father. Since Grandma Belle was away at work so much during Hannah's father's childhood, Aunt Eva helped raise him.

Towards the end of the book, Hannah discovers Aunt Eva's true former identity. Before she left Europe, Eva was known as Rivka. She is the same Rivka that Hannah/Chaya switched places with at the concentration camp to save her life. Eva tells Hannah her story of survival and about Chaya's sacrifice. In fact, Hannah was given the Hebrew name of Chaya in memory of Eva's friend and savior at the camp.

When she came to the United States after the war, she changed her name from Rivka to Eva. Many Holocaust survivors changed their names in order to help them start a new life and move past the trauma of the Holocaust. She wanted to forget her terrible past. Yet, at the end of the book, she admits to Hannah that it is impossible to forget.