From the crowd, someone asked a question. Noah had not known the language, but he knew the meaning: Is it true? Are we free?

“Ja, ja,“ the translator answered eagerly. He said again in a stronger voice, “Ja, ja,” as though the words were a sudden discovery. And the words were picked up among the listeners, repeated over and over, until the words became a cheer—a song, an anthem—lifted above their heads by waving hands.

From behind the crowd, a greater noise erupted, and the crowd parted, turned back. A group of men—younger, stronger than others—shoved at a German soldier who wore the insignia of the SS, bringing him into the center of the crowd, forcing him to kneel before an older man who wore a dirty rag around his head, covering his right eye. A look of horror was on the soldier’s face. The crowd became silent. One of the men stepped forward, handed the older man a pistol, a luger taken from the soldier, then stepped back.

The older man stood motionless, staring at the gun. His lips moved, but did not make words. His arms struggled to lift the pistol, the barrel aimed at the soldier’s head. The soldier whispered, “Nein, nein …”

“Sir,” a sergeant said to the lieutenant in a voice that carried warning.

“Shut up,” the lieutenant ordered.

“He’s going to kill that man,” the sergeant said.

“Who gives a shit?” the lieutenant growled.

“Sir, he’s a prisoner,” the sergeant replied. “The Geneva—”

“Look around you, soldier,” the lieutenant hissed. “You think the goddamn Geneva Convention did the first goddamn thing for these people?”

“But, sir, you can’t—”

“Mister, I gave you an order, didn’t I?” the lieutenant snapped.

“Sir?”

“Shut up,” the lieutenant said again.

A low moan began in the crowd, a shuffling of feet. The old man with the eye-rag let his face scan the crowd slowly, his head bobbing. His mouth opened and his tongue tipped tenderly over his cracked lips. He turned his face back to the man kneeling before him, glared at him bitterly, then pressed the trigger of the luger. The German soldier’s left temple exploded in blood, in fragments of bone and brain, and he fell, rolled onto his back. No one moved, no one spoke. The prisoners gazed down at the fallen body, watched the last heaving of life leave his chest. Then one of the men crept forward, leaned over, spat on the soldier, and a cheer flew up around him.

The sergeant’s body shivered. He swallowed hard, brought his face erect, lifted his eyes above the crowd.

“What was that about?” the lieutenant asked the translator.

“An eye for an eye,” the translator replied, making a motion with his hand to his eyes. He explained that the soldier had blinded the old man for no reason more compelling than looking away when the soldier addressed him.

“Looks like he got more than an eye in exchange,” the lieutenant said.

“You could kill him a hundred times and it would still not be equal,” the translator said bitterly.