“It’s nothing,” said the neutral citizen to his uniformed escort. “Just a joke. On to Tsarskoye Selo.” Neither guard moved. One of them, ominously, put down the suitcase he had been holding under his arm.

“Japan! Japan did it! It’s a sneak attack!” The transmitter had come racing back. He clung to the lamppost. Grozys and zlotys struck the ground all around him.

Then a second man appeared in the doorway. He had earphones over his ears. His hands held a wire antenna. “They sank a battleship! Roosevelt will make a speech! That means war!”

The other soldier also put down his suitcase. He took hold of Faulhaber instead. “War?” he said, in English. “America in war?”

Faulhaber’s head of course was spinning. When he had sailed from New York everything had been quiet and calm. He did his best to collect his wits. “Don’t believe them! America is a peaceful, friendly country. The holiday of Christmas is only a few weeks away!”

The armed guards simply stood there, confused. Before they could decide on a course of action, the crowd, the people hanging from all the windows, began to shout things at their heads. Remember—these were Jews speaking. Saying things they had not dared even to think before.

“Hangmen! Murderers! The tide has turned. You can’t beat the American army!”

“The Americans will build hundreds of tanks and bombers. On the assembly lines of Henry Ford!”

“Hail the liberators! Roosevelt! Morgenthau!”

James Faulhaber closed his eyes. Were prisoners of war, he wondered, permitted a phone call? But whom to telephone? He tottered a little, because the enemy suddenly released his arm. Alas, he felt something hard poking his rib cage. A gun muzzle? Bayonet? Then the crowd fell silent and all he could hear was the sound of windows slamming to.

“Faulhaber, James?”

The American opened his eyes. A gun, he had known it, was pressed against his body. But it was held by a short-statured stranger, with a stocking over his head. The members of the Occupying Power, both of them, were standing against a wall with empty hands in the air. A second figure, also wearing a stocking, was keeping them covered with a pistol of his own. There was a third stranger, too. Also shortish. With eyeglasses over his cloth disguise. “Hurry up! This way!” he cried. It was an odd, high-pitched voice. More important, the words were in Polish. The speaker trotted down an unnamed, unlit alley.

“Wait! Where are we going? I am an officer of the HYMBA! I am here on regular business. The Judenrat expects me. I must see Chairman Trumpelman.”

But the man with the gun only jabbed it painfully into the area of his kidney. “Go now!” he ordered, in the same boyish voice as his partner. “Or else I’ll shoot!”

Faulhaber found himself stumbling down the dark alley. A moment later the last hooded man came running toward them. He had the Conquerors’ rifles in his arms. Then the foursome, Faulhaber limping a little, moved swiftly away. They made many turns. The prisoner had no idea of where they were going—except that it was not in the direction of Tsarskoye Selo. His heart was beating wildly, from exhaustion and fear. His only thought was that he had fallen into the hands of Ghetto bandits.