Now, it seemed but a monument to the one hundred and fifty thousand Jewish Berliners who had been carried away to their deaths in squalid camps. Few had escaped and survived underground in this city in the long years of war. A handful at the most, perhaps a few hundred.

Was Miriam one of them?

Inside the entrance hall, he found a whole wall covered in pieces of paper with names and locations of survivors, and pleas for any knowledge of members of their family or friends. Every displaced persons camp had a similar wall and he had studied many of them. Now, he went through these new names, line by line, word by word, for a full fifteen minutes, then moved away, head down.

All those names. It was unbearable. And no sign of a Rabinowitz.

Other than that, it was like any hospital in Europe. Busy corridors, low voices, trolleys with patients being moved. At the front desk, he asked if he could speak to someone about a friend of his and was directed to a ground-floor office. He was admitted immediately and a middle-aged doctor introduced herself as Matilda Kuhn.

‘I survived,’ she said. ‘I say that every day but instead of feeling joy, I feel nothing but overhwelming guilt and despair.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I feel the same.’

‘But there is someone you wish to find, so there is still hope. Until a death is confirmed, we must all keep looking. What is this person’s name?’

‘Miriam Rabinowitz. She would be twenty-two, like me.’

She gave him a strange look. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you look a lot older than that.’

He tapped his eyebrow. ‘This helps. Also I grew up fast, and I’m glad that I did – for I was able to join the British Army and fight the fucking Nazis. Please forgive my language, Doctor.’

‘Don’t worry. They deserve all the adjectives you can throw at them.’

‘So anyway, I really am just twenty-two and I am an army officer. Lieutenant Mozes Heck.’

‘I can tell you are not a Berliner. Let me guess – Bavaria?’

‘I lived there as a child, but I am Dutch, from Amsterdam. I fear my family all perished. I have been looking for them in the DP camps, but no sign as yet.’

‘Don’t give up hope. It’s all we have. And this Miriam Rabinowitz, is she in your family?’

‘No, we met on holiday and exchanged letters. I am in Berlin on another matter and wished to see if she had survived.’

‘The name means nothing to me, I’m afraid. Have you looked at the notice wall?’

He nodded. Yes, he had studied every name. ‘Not a single Rabinowitz, nor a Heck, nor any other name I know.’