Instead I searched for spaces within the historical record where my characters might plausibly reside. To employ but one example: there really was a deportation train that left the detention camp in Bolzano, Italy, on October 24, 1944, and arrived at Birkenau after an indescribably harrowing four-day journey. Rather than remove any single voice from the historical record, and subsume that person’s truth into my story, I decided to add Nina’s voice to the chorus of women on the train. In so doing, I sincerely hope that I have helped to amplify the voices of those who were forced to undergo that journey, as well as the millions more whose lives were cut short by the horrors of the Holocaust.

I was inspired to adopt this approach by Susanne C. Knittel’s The Historical Uncanny: Disability, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Holocaust Memory, in which she describes the act of “vicarious witnessing.” Such an approach, she explains, “does not entail an act of speaking for and thus appropriating the memory and story of someone else but rather an attempt to bridge the silence through narrative means.”

Millions were silenced by the Holocaust. More than seventy-five years on, the inexorable passage of time is silencing the last of its survivors and its witnesses. Each year there are fewer among us who can bear direct witness to the horrors they endured; soon they will all be gone. And that is where vicarious witnesses, among them writers and historians like me, can attempt to defeat the silence. With my creation of Nina, her family, her struggles, and her triumphs, I am trying to make a difference. I am trying to act as a vicarious witness so these stories are not lost.

Antonina Mazin is a construct of my imagination, but her story was inspired by those of real people who lived, suffered, and died; people who loved and were loved; people whose lives have ended, but whose existence mattered. Their sacred memory must not be allowed to fade.

Glossary of Terms Used in This Book

Ammassi: the compulsory sale of grain and other farm products to state-managed granaries and distribution centers in fascist Italy

Appell: term for roll call in the Nazi camp system

Aufseherin: rank of female guard in the camp system; roughly equivalent to overseer

Blockowa: informal title for female guards in the camp system; of Polish origin

Brodo: broth or a light soup

Caffè d’orzo: a substitute for coffee made of roasted barley

Caffettiera: stovetop coffeemaker in widespread use before the invention of the more familiar moka pot

Calle (plural: calli): Venetian term for a narrow street

Campanile: bell tower; typically a separate structure from its adjacent church

Cantina: a storeroom, typically belowground, for food and wine

Carabinieri: Italy’s national police

Casa di Riposo: rest home; typically used to describe old-age homes

Crostoli: deep-fried squares or wide ribbons of lightly sweetened dough

Durchgangslager: transit camp

Erysipelas: a bacterial skin infection; commonly known as St. Anthony’s fire