Their first two lagers are idyllic, really. They are the best years of Ania’s life. She knows this is true, even much later when it is shameful to admit. Of course, in time, she will never say the best years of her life were spent running a Nazi youth program. Her sons would never forgive her; her daughter would die of shame. But truly, her memories of those first years are fairly benign: full of the clean, satisfying feeling of physical labor, the joy of song and dance, and the camaraderie of teamwork . . . When they are not busy with farm chores they engage in vigorous exercise. In accordance with Nazi philosophy, Ania and Rainer believe in the civilizing power of sports. What better way for young people to learn persistence, group allegiance, and self-sacrifice?

The first lager is in the south, outside Saarbrücken, in a beautiful country estate abandoned by its original owners. Abandoned, Ania will later realize, does not mean anything as lackadaisical as she imagined then. Vacated under duress is probably more accurate: the former owners were Jewish, and the Nuremberg laws now in place. But at the time, she grasps only that the owner was an imprudent debtor who has immigrated to America. Why would she look a gift horse in the mouth? The land around the estate belongs to a handful of prosperous local farmers, descendants of the serfs who originally tilled these same fields. How far Germany has come since those days! Rainer and the boys set off each morning to assist at one farm or another. There is much to do in the late summer and fall, and relatively little in the winter.

At night, like the dwarves in the famous fairy tale, they return to the lager, where Ania, their Snow White, has made a wholesome dinner and a pudding for dessert. They eat together at one long table, do their chores, and then assemble for songs, stories, and games.

The manor house is beyond beautiful with its grand high-ceilinged rooms, gilt moldings, and painted frescoes of Greek gods and solemn-faced cherubs. When Ania wakes each morning, she can step onto the private balcony off her bedroom and look out over the grounds: the charming overgrown lawn, the orchard with its pretty, blossoming trees, the tennis court (imagine!), and the impressive vegetable garden she has planted. It is hard work, certainly, but satisfying. She discovers she has a knack for coaxing strawberries from the cold earth and growing lush, deep green and red fronds of rhubarb, bumper crops of green beans and peas. In the Fortzmann house she never had a garden—there was only a scrubby plot of potatoes and gooseberries that fell under Frau Richter’s charge. The science of growing appeals to Ania, as does the physical labor. Rainer allows her to plan the boys’ fitness regimen. She challenges them to compete in hurdle jumping, sprints, even obstacle courses, which she bases on her favorite gymnastics troop exercises.

And the boys are sweet and fresh faced, younger than Ania imagined, only twelve and thirteen, on the cusp of their teen years. They are dear creatures, excited to be sprung from their homes in cities and from the boring, traditional subjects of Latin, arithmetic, literature, and geography.