They found the guns almost immediately, along with a stash of French francs and German marks locked in a cabinet in Sturmbannführer Richter’s bedroom. After checking the chambers for a full round of bullets, the women helped themselves to two P08 Lugers, as well as the cash, hoping that when the commandant found the guns and money missing, he would believe his wife had taken them. The women would need funds once they were free.

The burning continued throughout the following day, August 16. Sometime late in the night Sturmbannführer Richter returned to the house. The women agreed that Bridgette would lock Nicoline in her room and keep the keys in her possession. “But…he will come for you if he finds my door locked, Bernadette,” Nicoline said.

“Not to worry. I sleep with one eye open. I will hear him enter the house. The moment his jackboots turn in the direction of my bedroom door, I will welcome him with a surprise he won’t live long enough to appreciate.”

All night Bridgette waited to hear Sturmbannführer Richter stomp into the house, but when dawn broke, and she poked her head out her room, she saw no sign of the camp commandant. He had come and gone like a shadow, taking the packed bag on his bed with him and leaving the door to the locked cabinet open and empty of its remaining contents. Bridgette knocked on Nicoline’s door, rattling the keys. “Nicoline, it’s me,” she said loudly, standing a safe distance from her door. “Richter looks to have gone. I’m going to unlock the door now.”

When Bridgette turned the key and pushed the door open, she found Nicoline standing with the gun aimed at the doorway. Seeing Bridgette alone, she lowered the gun limply to her side. “Gone?”

“For good, it looks like.” Bridgette put her arms around the frail woman’s trembling body. “I think we’re safe, Nicoline. Look outside.”

From the windows, they could see SS officers and German guards hastily piling into a convoy of loaded jeeps and trucks and beginning an exodus toward the entrance gates of the camp. Some staff cars, no longer waving Nazi flags, roared past the line without waiting their turn, their passengers dressed in civilian clothes. “Rats deserting a sinking ship,” Bridgette observed in disgust.

“You mean…they are truly leaving?”

“Before the liberators get here and shoot them or worse,” Bridgette said, taking her arm. “Shall we risk stepping outside?”

Neither woman had placed a foot on the ground or felt the sun on her skin since being imprisoned in the Richters’ house and forbidden to step outside on punishment of the whip. For Nicoline, the last day she felt the sun, such as it was in Drancy, was July 17, 1941; for Bridgette, June 10, 1944.