Rainer gives a noncommittal shrug. This new Rainer is stern and silent all the time—less like a partner and more like an unreliable roommate. At night he drinks vodka and grows moody and speaks to the boys in a sarcastic snarl. Ania is a little bit afraid of him.

As far as she can tell, the lager boys are cruel and domineering already. This is not their first lager—many have been living in youth homes where they have been sent to escape the bomb-threatened cities for years. In their free time, which is plentiful, they improvise hard games: a ball toss in which the loser is beaten on the back with sticks, a race in which the winner walks on the other boys in his hobnailed work boots. Everything is a contest of strength and power—they beat one another black and blue over who sleeps on the top bunk, who takes the first freezing bath, who has to muck out the latrine. The same boys always win. When Ania attempts to stop them, Rainer intervenes: “Why?” he asks. “They will need to be hard.”

“But they can still be human, can’t they?” she asks.

This is the first time Rainer slaps her. It comes out of nowhere. He is standing beside her as she washes the dishes and, at first, when his hand arcs toward her face, Ania thinks it is a plate flying out of the sink. She steps back in shock.

“Don’t talk that way,” he says as she raises a hand to her bloodied lip. “For your own good.”

There is no more strolling through green wheat fields at dusk singing German folk songs. There are no more Sunday-morning hikes and campfire games. There is no more decent heating, clothing, or food.

Rainer broods and sulks and spends hours polishing his boots. His face has become set in a bitter expression. He has no passion left—not for the ideals that they set out with, not for Hitler, and certainly not for Ania. Here in the Warthegau, he doesn’t even attempt intercourse. He sleeps in a spartan room off the boys’ dormitory, while Ania shares a room off the kitchen with their sons. One night before he slapped her she knocked on his door, in a combination of loneliness and determination. Can I come in? she asked, blushing, holding her nightgown at the throat. But when Rainer opened the door, he only looked at her with a kind of weary pity. It’s late for conversation, Ania. Go to bed.

Ania’s days involve long shuffles through the mud to the post office where their rations and supplies are delivered. Like a goat, she tows cartons of potatoes, flour, and salt pork in a cart with a shoulder yoke. She keeps Anselm and Wolfgang beside her in the kitchen. Rainer does not approve, but she insists. Her boys are too young to run around with the others. And it isn’t only their age that makes them vulnerable—they are softer than the rest. Hitler has not yet weaned them of their mother. She can see that Rainer is embarrassed by this.