Dutch Red Cross workers arrived the next day, bringing more news. Miriam and the others hungered for it even more than for food. She was sitting in the warm sunshine outside the dining hall with Ernst Lubbers and a group from the orchestra, discussing the railroad strike that had halted the deportations from Westerbork, when one of the Red Cross workers made a comment about the trains’ destinations in the East. “You’re among the lucky ones who didn’t end up in Poland in those horrible concentration camps. The others . . . May God rest their souls . . .” Her words brought silence as if everyone had stopped breathing.

“What do you mean?” Ernst asked an eternity later. The worker hesitated, her hand over her mouth as if she’d said more than she should have. Ernst sat forward, pleading with her. “We’ve had no news in months —years. Please, tell us what you know so we can face whatever it is.”

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It might be better to wait and hear about it with people you love.”

“Most of us don’t know what has become of the people we love! Tell us!” He was demanding, not asking. Part of Miriam wanted to run out onto the heath and keep running rather than hear the truth about where Abba and so many of her loved ones had gone. But the anxiety she saw on her friends’ faces made her decide to stay and face the news with them.

The worker spoke quickly now, as if unloading an unbearable burden. “Our Soviet allies have liberated the labor camps in Poland. They discovered that the Nazis have been sending people to their deaths, killing women and children and the elderly the same day they arrived on the trains. Thousands more starved or died of diseases in the camps. From what I’ve heard, Westerbork is a paradise compared to the other camps. I’m so sorry.”

“You mean they’ve been killing all of the Jews who were deported from the Netherlands?” Ernst asked.

The worker’s eyes filled with tears. “Not only from here . . . The Nazis deported and executed Jews from every country, including their own. Austria, Romania, Hungary, Belgium, France . . .” She couldn’t finish.

“This can’t be true,” someone murmured. “That would be millions of people.”

The Red Cross worker lowered her face, tears falling onto her lap. “I’m so sorry.”

Miriam pictured her family’s home in Cologne and the Jewish streets and neighborhoods surrounding it. Thousands of Jews had lived there, worked there. Hundreds had attended the synagogue in Leiden. Tens of thousands lived in Amsterdam. Had the Nazis killed all of them? It seemed impossible. And for what reason?

Abba. Avi. Elisheva . . . Mother. Aunt Louisa and Uncle David. Aunt Shoshanna and Uncle Nathan. Saul and her other cousins . . . Mrs. Spielman and her family . . . the families of the women she’d hidden with . . . Impossible.