Ania stops and stares.

“Move along,” the SS man barks, and Ania complies automatically. But she keeps her eyes on the women. As she watches, one of them sinks to her knees, causing confusion down the line—the others continue to pull, even though she is still attached to the rope of her harness. Her body sags forward but cannot completely drop. No one stops, and for a grisly moment, she is pulled along, in danger of being run over. Then the accompanying guard lunges forward and slices the rope that holds her and she tumbles to the ground. The woman behind her manages to kick her body to the side, out of the way of the wheel.

Without thinking, Ania stops and covers her mouth.

“Nha?” The younger guard grins. “Arbeit macht frei.” Ania can make out the words despite his Polish accent. A grim parody of what she once understood them to mean: Work will free you. Reeducation through labor, Hitler’s promise of redemption through hard work.

On the other side of the fence, the fallen woman gets to her knees. Ania’s whole body is swept with relief. She is all right! But then, in one motion, the guard smacks her with the butt of his rifle. She falls sideways, this time facing the gate.

“Frau Brandt!” the senior SS man says sharply. “Unterscharführer Pretski will take your boys to their quarters. You will follow me to sign the papers. There is a train due in half an hour that you can take back.”

As if underwater, Ania returns her eyes to the boys, these fifteen-year-olds she has delivered to this hell. “Heil Hitler!” Heiner says loudly and salutes. Gerald, more shakily, follows suit.

Ania knows what is required of her. But she cannot move her arm, or open her mouth.

Their eyes are all on her.

“Mach’s gut,” she says in something like a whisper as, on the other side, the woman is dragged away.

All the way back to the lager, Ania thinks of the boys. Of horrible Heiner and kind Gerald and the fact that she is the one who delivered them to that place. She thinks of Gerald’s unwitting mother, in some drab apartment, missing her son. And she thinks of Otto Smeltz, the first boy she betrayed. She is no better than those SS men with the babies. All these years she has been putting one foot before the other, imagining herself a good person, a good mother, someone laboring for a just cause.

And she thinks of the woman hanging from the cart, the way she fell, slumped at the waist like a rag doll. When she crawled to her knees and looked out toward Ania, her face was empty, filled only with pain and the most basic remnant of life. But once, it had been the face of a mother or wife. Possibly of a sister or an aunt or a best friend. And underneath the layers of time, the face of someone’s child, a girl some mother diapered and fed and held.