“No. Not alive when they burn.” A pause, another birdlike tilt of her head. “They gas them first. Those who fail selection. Lazy ones. Sick. The troublemakers. They all go to the gas.”

Nina’s world shrank to the aufseherin’s mouth and the poison she spoke and the calamitous truth embedded in her words. They all go to the gas.

Her parents were dead.

Since the day Nico and Father Bernardi had told her of their deportation she had known, but she hadn’t been brave enough to face it. And now she could shut her mind to it no longer.

She knew.

The guards would have separated them. Mamma would have been alone. Defenseless, unable even to stand. Would she even have survived the journey?

But Papà would have been alive when they had torn him from his beloved’s arms. When they had pushed him onto the train. When they had led him to the gas.

He had known what was being done to him and the woman he loved.

Nina looked up, hoping for a glimpse of the sky beyond the swirling plumes of smoke. It was a clear night, the moon a delicate, gleaming crescent, and the stars hung low and bright and almost close enough to touch.

Mamma and Papà were waiting for her. Nico, too. They had already made this journey; they knew what it was to die. And they were with her, still, in the starry dome of the heavens. They were with her.

She would not be alone at the end.

Chapter 28

30 October 1944

Another day ground by, endless and enervating, its every hour made rancid by fear.

Apart from the few survivors from their train, no one else in their block spoke Italian. The languages all blurred into one homogenous and frightening mystery to Nina, but Stella recognized some of them and was even able to converse, after a fashion, with a handful of the others.

“Most of the women here are from Hungary,” she told Nina after evening appell, “and I only know enough Hungarian to say ‘hello’ and ‘how are you.’ So that’s not much help. But there are women here from all over Europe. Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, even Denmark.”

“How do you know so many languages?”

“I don’t. I mean, not really. My parents had a company that published guidebooks for tourists, and they included little phrase books with each guide. I used to read them, just for fun.” There was a hitch in Stella’s voice at the memory of fun.

“Were you able to learn anything else from the others?” Nina pressed. “Apart from where they’re all from, I mean.”

“A little. I was able to understand quite a lot of what the Frenchwoman told me.”

“And?”

“She said that most newcomers aren’t here for very long. A few days, maybe a week or so, and then their numbers are called and they leave. She’s been here since September.”