Ans hadn’t had much time to rehearse her story while she’d waited in the first cell, but she knew from her underground training in Leiden how important every detail was. She kept her head lowered, playing the part of a simple farm maid, while the paperwork was completed. The Gestapo officer waited as well, a fox watching his prey. Ans was led to another room when her papers were complete and was told to remove all of her clothes in front of the guards and the waiting Gestapo officer. She wept in spite of her resolve not to. When they finished their thorough, humiliating search, they gave her back her underwear and a shapeless prison gown.

“Come with me, Bernandina,” the fox-faced Gestapo officer said in Dutch after she dressed. He led her into a tiny windowless room, no bigger than a closet, and told her to sit down on the only chair. He stood above her. “Why are you breaking curfew, bitte?”

“Because I —”

“Ah, ah, ah . . . look at me when you speak, bitte.”

Ans lifted her face. He would see that her fear was genuine. Would he also see that some of what she was about to tell him were lies? She needed to keep her answers simple and short to convince him that she was a naive, guileless maid. “Because I was riding my bicycle home from an errand in Bodegraven and —”

“What was your errand?”

She gave the reply she’d rehearsed in the jail cell. “Shoes. I needed new shoes.” She pointed to her blistered feet and worn-out boots. They hadn’t given her time to put them back on after they’d pulled out the laces and searched them thoroughly.

“Where are the new shoes?”

“I didn’t buy any.”

“So you came to Woerden? To search for shoes after curfew?”

“No, I-I —”

“Wouldn’t it make sense to come to Woerden first before going all the way to Bodegraven? They sell shoes here, too.”

“It was my day off. I wanted to get away —”

“Tell me why you were out after curfew.”

“Two soldiers stopped me and stole my bike. I begged them not to. I knew I couldn’t get back to the farm in time, but they —”

“Who owns this farm where you live?”

“The Dykstras. I work there as a maid.”

“Yet you came to Woerden instead of going home?”

“I couldn’t walk home in the dark.”

“Who were you going to stay with?”

“I-I didn’t know. We bring milk to a dairy here. They know me. I-I thought maybe with them.” That much was also true. The Gestapo could check with the dairyman. Ans had avoided giving any names or addresses of her underground contacts or safe houses. “I would have been home on time if they hadn’t stolen my bike!”