The next day there was a very curious atmosphere on the factory floor. The guards seemed strangely edgy. When the factory whistle signalled the lunch break, the women too were given permission to have an hour’s rest, and when work finished for the general workers at the end of the day, it finished for them as well.

Over the next few days, other changes took place. Secondhand clothing and clogs were distributed. The stinking makeshift privy in the yard was demolished. One of the indoor toilets was allocated for slave-labour use. When Hester and Detta were allowed into it for the first time, they entered it as nervously as if it had been a palace.

‘There are washbasins, Detta,’ Hester said unbelievingly. ‘And oh, dear God, Detta, there is hot water!’

It had been too much for her. She hadn’t been able to wash her hands in hot water for nearly four years and as the SS guard who had escorted them to the toilet had not entered it with them, they frenziedly washed everything else they could before he bellowed at them to come out.

That evening, back at the barracks, the Russian women told them that the owner of the factory had been visiting it on the day one of their number had died. ‘And it seems he has clout,’ a Russian woman said, ‘even with those devils from hell, our guards.’

The factory owner’s clout continued. The next day, there was bread and soup provided for all slave labourers at lunchtime.

‘This won’t have come from prison rations,’ Detta said, between greedy mouthfuls. ‘This will have come from his own pocket. Jehovah is providing for us, Hester. We’re going to survive this war, just as I told you we would.’

Hester refrained from pointing out that it was the factory owner who was providing for them. If Detta chose to believe he was doing so because God had prompted him, it was fine by her. What she wanted to know was whether or not the factory owner was Claus.

She had the answer to her question two days later.

A batch of Wehrmacht uniforms had swung through on the overhead rail, faulty. The foreman demanded she leave the packing room to inform the foreman in the inspection room. For a slave labourer it was practically a task of responsibility and gave her a moment that almost felt like freedom. A moment marred by the presence of the SS guard who heaved himself away from where he had been sitting in order to accompany her.

This wasn’t Sachsenhausen, though. In blessed wonder, she realized she was no longer in fear of being sexually violated, not while she was on factory premises. In the factory, things like that no longer happened.

The walk from one department to the adjoining one was short. Within yards of the inspection room, the inspection-room doors suddenly opened and a flurry of people came out.

They weren’t workers. They were high-ranking officials. Terrified he was going to be severely reprimanded for escorting a slave labourer along a corridor used by senior management, the SS guard flung her flat against the wall and sprang to instant attention, giving a smart salute and a ‘Heil Hitler’.