When the boys are two and three, Germany invades Poland. No one wants war—it has been only twenty-one years since their last one!—but Ania believes the stories she reads in the German papers, which call it a war of self-defense. According to the papers, the Poles have made a number of incursions onto German soil, murdering innocent citizens and taking over their radio station in Gleiwitz. She is an intelligent woman, but she is not a skeptic. It must be true if the paper reports it.

Their next lager is also fine. It is 1940. Germany is at war. Most German papers still call it a war of self-defense. As allies of Poland, France and the United Kingdom have declared war on Germany. No one wanted it to come to this. But so far, for the Germans, it has gone swimmingly. This lager is in Luxembourg, which is now a conquered country, rolled over in the rapid and remarkably successful German invasion of France. But conquered is not how she and Rainer and the rest of the Germans they know think of it. Luxembourg has become “Luxemburg” and been welcomed into the Reich. Its people have little to complain about. Their casualties amounted to all of seventy-five when the German army invaded. And now they have the opportunities afforded to citizens of the Reich, including participation in these lagers. As long as they don’t speak French.

This time, the lager is housed in a modest barracks-like building. It is not as splendid as the one outside Saarbrücken, but it is comfortable. The work is good, life is wholesome, and the war still distant. Suddenly, from Paris, there is an influx of fine things: At Christmas, Rainer gives Ania silk stockings (where is she supposed to wear these?), and also a beautiful, sturdy watch. There is goose liver pâté for the boys to taste, and champagne for the adults. Regular food is now rationed more strictly—eggs and pork and milk are set aside exclusively for the troops. But the lager receives a portion of the food they help produce—flour, potatoes, barley, fresh fruit in the summer, carrots, and beets. It is a shame to be at war, of course, but Ania relishes the order and fullness of her life.

They are still in this lager when Germany declares war on Russia in 1941. This is an unsettling turn of events. Ania is not the only one to feel the first real grains of doubt. A preventive war, the Nazis call it. Better to attack than be attacked. But the German army is worn out. Anyone can see that it is dangerous for a country to wage war on two fronts. And the Allies have begun bombing in earnest—air raids are the new measure of urban life.

Ania knows Rainer will be called to the front, but even so, the order comes as a shock. She and her boys are to return home. But where is home? Herr Doktor Fortzmann is dead. Old Herr Brandt is dead. Rainer’s mother is an invalid. And their lager is to be shut.