He gave me a look of utter scorn. “A Jewish child. I begrudge the amount of air she breathes. She will be sent to a camp like all Jews.” He paused. “As will you. I don’t have the time or the men to deal with you here. There is a camp for non-Jewish political prisoners north of Milan. That is where you will go.”

“And Hanni?”

“The girl will go with other Jews to a camp somewhere in Eastern Europe. Poland, I believe.”

“Can I not say goodbye to her?”

Again that withering smile. “Your devotion to a Jew is quite touching, Frä ulein. Are you sure you have no Jewish ancestry yourself?”

“As you can see from my red hair, I am entirely Celt,” I said. “But I would stand up for the ill treatment of any human being.”

He said something rapidly in German. I was grabbed by the arm and dragged out of the room. I tried to get a glimpse of Hanni as I was hurried across the station, but then I was shoved into the back of a lorry. The door was slammed on me, and I was driven away in darkness.

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 45

Juliet, a camp in the north of Italy, November 1943

Of the next weeks I will say little. I was housed in a barrack with around thirty other women. Some had been working with the partisans. Some had written or spoken against Mussolini. Others had helped Jews. Most of them were young. Some had already been raped by the Germans before they came to the camp. I think all of us were traumatized to a certain extent. We didn’t talk much, as if we didn’t want to risk making friends, and I was suspicious to them, as I was English and not one of them. That was fine with me. I had no words left to speak. No tears either.

We slept on wooden bunks, stacked three high. Our mattresses were stuffed with straw and crawling with fleas. After a few days I was covered in bites. It had also become bitterly cold, and the huts were not heated. Our clothes and belongings had been taken. We were made to wear a prison uniform of coarse cotton that did nothing to keep out the wind when we had to stand for morning roll call. We shared a blanket at night, huddling against each other for warmth. We were fed a meal of soup each day—sometimes with pasta, sometimes beans, sometimes just hot water with bits of greens. And a piece of stale bread. While I was there, one of the women became really sick and was carried off. I never saw her again, so I don’t know if she died or recovered in hospital.