“Some live at the Dora camp now, not far from here. But other men still live in the cross tunnels. It’s about efficiency, you see. If they are here, we don’t waste time transporting them back and forth.”

I heard what he was really saying: the rocket program had been deemed more important than anything else—a higher priority than hygiene or dignity or comfort or even the sanctity of human life.

I turned back to face the tunnel in front of the car, but my eyes had finally adjusted to the light and now I saw striped uniforms hanging on skeletal frames everywhere. There were hundreds of men in this section, maybe even more. They were bent over tables, fixing fine parts to small components. They were on scaffolds, working on the lights that illuminated the passage. They were collapsed on the floor, as if they’d died standing and simply folded over themselves. They were pushing train carriages by hand, dozens of men grunting and grimacing as they tried to push components along.

Not one of them looked at the car as we passed, and I wanted nothing more than to look away from them too. Each seemed more drawn than the last, their hair matted, their bodies often showing signs of trauma—a bloodied hand, a severe limp, a bruised face. Every single man was emaciated. I had no idea how they were sustaining the intense manual labor—sometimes I saw four or five men working together to lift one small piece of metal, or two men struggling to push a tiny component into place.

“How do you bear this every day?” I whispered to Aldo.

“I tried to warn you,” he said weakly. “This is no place for a lady.”

“Is it always like this?”

“It was much worse in the beginning,” he said. “This is more orderly…less distressing than it used to be.”

My stomach lurched at the thought. I pressed my fist into my mouth. I wanted to pray for strength, but I had the sense that what was happening in those tunnels was beyond the reach even of God.

The tunnel kept rolling on and on. It felt like we’d been driving for hours, although a glance at my watch confirmed it had only been minutes. I was desperate to see Jürgen. I was desperate to get out of there. How did these prisoners endure it?

“How much farther?”

“A few hundred feet more.”

“How long is this facility?”

“The entire loop through both is about two miles long.”

“Is it all like this?” I asked, my voice small.

“Yes.”

We drove on in silence. But for the evolution of the rockets on the line, I might have been caught in an endless loop of the same fifty feet of tunnel, a repeated, sickening montage of the absolute depths of human misery.