“You should be ashamed,” she says, speaking equally to herself.

When they stand, Gerald is bleeding. His lip is split, and he has a black eye. She takes the handkerchief from her pocket, spits on it, and wipes his cuts.

They continue the rest of their walk in merciful silence, occasionally interrupted by Heiner’s tuneless whistling. From Gerald she hears a quiet, choked breathing sound. His face has swollen to a livid purple; she tries not to think of his mother. It will be up to Ania to explain his condition to the authorities.

The station at Kutno is packed with people. Since Stalingrad, the Russians have been advancing. The chickens are coming home to roost. Everyone in the east knows it, never mind what Hitler and Goebbels and Der Stürmer tell them to believe. Here are the first waves of evidence: wizened grandmothers, bedraggled young women and babies, old men with long faces and an air of desperation, all fleeing before the advancing Russian troops.

Ania and the boys are the only ones waiting on this side of the tracks. The camp where they are headed is farther east. Hitler has ordered Germans in the territories to stay put, but meanwhile Himmler quietly moves their prisoners deeper into the Reich.

“Will we take the prisoners west by train?” Gerald asks.

Ania has no idea. Truthfully, she has not given the details of their task much thought. Ania has become skilled at not thinking beyond her own sons.

It is late afternoon when they arrive. The sky is vast and gray. The station has no name, and there is no town or village anywhere in sight—only a fence surrounding long, low barracks beside a giant quarry. Ania is confused. She has understood the camp to supply labor for an SS farm. But this does not look like a farm.

Even Heiner seems cowed. They make their way along the fence toward what appears to be the front gate, flanked on both sides by rudimentary guard booths, from which two SS men emerge. “Halt!” one shouts.

Ania and the boys freeze.

An eerie silence follows, punctuated by the whirring and hammering of heavy machinery. The men continue their approach.

It occurs to Ania that she is expected to speak.

“We’ve come from Lager 428, in the Warthegau,” she says. “I am delivering trainees.”

The older of the two men holds out his hand for the papers. The younger one grins and nicks his chin toward Gerald’s swollen face.

The man glances up from the papers and eyes Heiner and Gerald, his gaze lingering on the black eye. Then he nods. Apparently they are in the right place.

He gestures for the boys to walk.

As they continue toward the gate, they can see the activity on the other side. Prisoners are sorting piles of stones and loading them into wagons bound for a cement works. A group of them pull an impossibly heavy-looking cart. And, as Ania watches, something becomes clear: they are all women.