A fortnight later, around the end of March, some one hundred prisoners were ordered to remain standing at the end of morning roll call. It was one of those days when the wind begins to feel less harsh, more like spring than winter. In the fields beyond the barbed wire, they could even make out some flowers, a strange splash of colour in their grey world. They stayed standing for two hours, and although they were meant to be silent, the parade ground hummed with snatches of whispered conversations.

‘They’re going to shoot us.’

‘They’ll be taking us east.’

‘Notice how they’ve not kept any Russians behind… or Poles.’

After two hours, a long black Daimler pulled into the parade ground and four men in SS uniforms climbed out. One of them walked to a microphone.

‘That’s Pauly, the bastard,’ said August.

‘Who’s he?’

‘SS Obersturmbannführer Max Pauly, the commandant of Neuengamme: as I said, a bastard.’

The loudspeakers threw out a series of screeches as the commandant moved the microphone around.

‘In twelve minutes, trucks will arrive to transport you to Lübeck. I don’t want you to think that because you’re in a city and away from here somehow security will be less tight. In fact, it will be the opposite. My men who’ll be accompanying you have orders to shoot anyone who causes problems. You should now go to your huts and pack whatever miserable possessions you may have.’

Lübeck had been bombed so heavily, it took Prince a while to realise that they were actually being driven through a city. Through the gaps in the tarpaulin it seemed at first as if they were in a quarry, and then an abandoned industrial area.

Eventually the trucks pulled into a port and came to a halt in front of an enormous building. They remained there for an hour while a series of arguments raged outside. The prisoners caught snatches of it, the gist being that the SS officer in charge of them thought it was too risky to keep them by the docks, while someone else said this was the only option: ‘Otherwise you can turn round and drive them back to the Elbe!’

More arguing, then they were suddenly ordered to leave the trucks and hurried into the building, which seemed to be a deserted warehouse. They were marched up to the top floor, where a roll call was taken and they were ordered to remain standing. An hour later, they were taken down to the floor below, where in a vast room a pile of blankets waited at one end and two enormous vats of soup at another.

Eat.

Sleep.