She didn’t add that she’d also seen lots of dead bodies, many of them civilians who had been caught in the firing when they’d dashed from the Bismarckstrasse public shelter to get water from a near by street pump; or that there’d been looting, and that all the apartments, her mother’s included, had been ransacked.

‘I’m going out too!’ Gertrud, Irmgard’s sixteen-year-old daughter, said defiantly. ‘I can’t stand being cooped up in here any longer! If Lotti can go out, then so can I!’

‘Not if there are Russians only streets away!’ her mother shrieked, grabbing hold of her.

‘She’s more in danger of being ripped apart by shrapnel than of being raped,’ Zelda said, weary beyond belief of their mole-like existence. ‘Russians aren’t animals. Why should they rape every woman they see?’

‘For retribution,’ Hester said quietly. ‘It will be done in revenge for all the atrocities and mass murders committed by German SS troops in Russia. It will be done in retribution for the extermination camps—camps where the SS were too impatient to wait for prisoners to die of beatings and starvation—camps where, with German and Polish Jews, Russian men, women and children were gassed in their thousands.’

They all stared at her, Zelda and Ilse and Lotti included, as if she were raving.

‘There aren’t any such places,’ Irmgard Diekermann said scoffingly. ‘Don’t listen to her. She’s making it up.’

‘No, I’m not.’ Hester’s dark eyes burned in a face that had become bloodless. ‘I know because I spent two years in Ravensbrück concentration camp and two years in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. I know about the gassings because Claus told me of them—and he got his information from Reichsmarschall Göring.’

No one said anything. Speech was beyond everyone. At last, it was Irmgard’s elderly mother who broke the silence, her voice trembling with indignation. ‘You’re a Jewess, aren’t you?’ she said accusingly. ‘My God, I’ve been holed up for two days and two nights with a filthy Jewess!’

Before Zelda or Ilse or Lotti could give her the benefit of hearing what they thought of her, Frau Menzel said, quick as a flash, ‘You could always leave, Gerd. The air in the cellar, for the rest of us, will then be a little sweeter.’

‘You must forgive my mother,’ Irmgard Diekermann said hastily, terrified by the expression on Lotti’s face. ‘She’s old. She doesn’t understand that all that business is over with now. The rest of us don’t care that your friend is Jewish. I have a little bit of cheese in my bag. Would your friend like a little of my cheese?’

‘Hester isn’t only my friend, she’s family,’ Lotti said icily. ‘And no, Frau Diekermann. Please keep your cheese to yourself. We have provisions enough.’

A barrage of thunderous mortar fire deafened them all and then, as the reverberations rumbled away, there was heavy knocking on the cellar door and a woman’s voice could be heard, calling for help.

‘Don’t answer her,’ Herr Diekermann said as Ilse and Lotti sprang to their feet. ‘It could be a ruse. It could be Red Army troops. They have women in their troops—women with submachine guns.’