And by then, I’d had a chance to tell Claudia the whole, ugly story of our past in Germany, and that made all the difference. Gisela had a new friend in Mila, and Felix and Luis were best of pals too. It was startling how much of a difference those connections made for my children, particularly Gisela, who decided America might not be such a bad place after all.

Jürgen and I both gave evidence during the trial. I was done in just an afternoon, just long enough to confirm the pattern of Henry Davis’s harassment and the theft of my photographs. Jürgen’s testimony was much more involved, and he was on the stand for days. I’d heard it all before—Jürgen and I discussed everything that had happened so many times I knew his side of the story by heart. Even so, I wept as he talked about how it felt to lie on the grass outside our home, wondering if he was going to die in my arms.

The doctors who testified were all in agreement. Henry Davis was suffering from combat fatigue—but that wasn’t the cause of his delusions. He’d sustained severe organic brain damage during an intensive round of insulin shock therapy, which he’d only undergone in a desperate attempt to get some semblance of normalcy back to his life.

“But how are we to know that this is not who Henry Davis was even before that therapy?” the prosecutor asked. That was when Lizzie Miller took the stand. She was barely recognizable—dressed in trousers and flat shoes, her hair longer and pulled into a rough ponytail, her freckles and light eyelashes on full display. She smiled softly at her brother between her answers, as if encouraging him with her eyes. The polished suburbanite had disappeared, but in her place was a warrior.

She advocated for Henry Davis. She told the court about the conversations she’d had with him about his experiences at Buchenwald, about the loss of his best friend, about his desperation to accept any treatment that might help him feel well again in the aftermath of the war. She spoke about her brother with such warmth and fondness that even Jürgen seemed heartbroken for him by the time she’d finished. When I looked to the jury, I saw some of them had tears in their eyes.

I knew what the verdict would be long before the trial was over. I worried that Henry Davis would get off scot-free for what he’d done to my family. Now I understood that he was going to be in a prison of sorts for the rest of his life, regardless of the verdict.