In the weeks after the war ended, Frau Vortmuller, a religious woman, began to speak to the children about God. Once she was the only supervisor left at the Children’s Home—Herr Stulper had taken off at the first sign of the Americans—who was there to reprimand her? The Americans, who held church every Sunday in their barracks and wore crosses underneath their uniforms? She included Bible readings and nightly prayers in the children’s bedtime routine. Herr Stulper would have reported her. He had taught them about racial purity and German Heimat and the divine wisdom of their Führer and had no patience for what he called “Christian superstitions.” Mostly the children hated him. Although he had led them on a few wonderful hikes in the mountains and let them listen to Nazi-endorsed radio programs. Martin grew to love one song that was played often: “Erika,” which he understood to be a folksy ballad about a flower and a pair of childhood sweethearts. Until Liesel “Falkman” whispered to him that singing along to it was as bad as spitting on his father’s grave. Martin did not understand this. How could it be like spitting on his father’s grave? The fathers and mothers of the children in the home had made “mistakes,” he understood. Now they were dead. And it was Frau Vortmuller and Herr Stulper’s job to ready them for new families—rich, powerful Nazi families who would teach them to be good Germans.

Bullshit, Liesel said. Our mothers aren’t dead—they’re in prisons or concentration camps.

For what? Martin asked.

For plotting to kill Hitler, Dummkopf.

Martin was filled with shame. For plotting to kill the Führer, who Frau Vortmuller assured them in many ways was all-knowing, kind, and good? His own mother and father had done this?

At eleven, Liesel had a wider, darker sense of the world than Martin. When Frau Vortmuller extinguished the candles at night, Liesel would climb into Martin’s bed and whisper secrets. She was not supposed to be in the home with the others. Her parents were Communists, not aristocrats. Her bloodlines did not date back to Frederick the Great or Bismarck or anyone else of national significance. But somehow, when her parents were taken by the Gestapo, Liesel had been brought here. Maybe because she was pretty and blond and blue eyed. This Martin understood. Liesel was the prettiest girl he knew. She would make a good child for an important Nazi family. Wasn’t she happy then, that they had made this mistake? No, Liesel would scowl at him when he asked such questions. She didn’t want to live with Nazi pigs.

Then, suddenly, it seemed Liesel was right. Their mothers were alive. The first to arrive was Adalbert “Schmedding’s”—a gaunt, hollow-cheeked woman with a dark-haired baby in her arms. She had cried and cried as she held her son, stuffing his face against her belly as if, rather than reuniting, they were saying good-bye. And then others came in batches: Claus and Gretel’s glamorous aunt from England, who was taking them to their mother in Switzerland; the “Beckers’” sweet, tired mother straight out of solitary confinement in Ravensbrück; the “Hansers’” mother by way of a fancy American armed forces escort car. At first Martin’s heart had leapt every time the gate bell chimed. His mother! He thought of her blond head bent over the game of marbles they would play, her fine strands of hair catching the sun—and the tight grip of her hand as she walked beside him past the bombed fountain to the Apotheke or the market. He recalled how it felt to press his face against the stiffly washed fabric of her dress and, underneath it, the softness of her breast.