“Miraculous!” he announced, pulling a slim packet of stapled papers from the drawer. “Here it is—his Fragebogen.” He extended it to her. “For what it’s worth. God knows what people make up on these things.”

Marianne scanned the pages. Address, birthday, education (he had finished school at fourteen), party membership (joined 1942). Member of the Reserve. And then there it was. On the third page. Ordnungspolizei. District Kiel, District Mecklenburg, District Lublin.

Her eyes stuck on the word Lublin. That was where Freddy Lederer had been.

“Not good?” Peterman asked, seeing her face. “Let me see.” He took the papers from her hand and looked them over. “Not even a member of the party until ’42, probably because they made him when he was called up,” he said, flicking his finger against the page. “A nobody. I wouldn’t have sent you one of the real crazies.”

Marianne shook her head. In her mind’s eye, she saw Freddy’s face again—a sweet, unserious man, transformed by despair. The “Jewish Action” he had witnessed was carried out by a unit of the Ordnungspolizei. All those children marched into the woods holding their mothers’ hands.

Concern spread over Peterman’s face as he watched her. “Did he do something to you?”

“No.” Marianne looked at him. “But they did terrible things in Lublin.”

“Ah.” Peterman looked confused. He stared at the paper, searching for information that would clarify her response. Finding nothing, he lifted his eyes to hers. “So what do you want me to do?”

Marianne stared at him.

“Tell him to finish chopping whatever trees he has felled,” she said. “And then not to come back.”

Peterman sighed. “He’s being transferred to a French camp at the end of the month, anyway.”

Marianne leveled her gaze. “Tell him.”

Every day the American and British radio programs broadcast new and grisly stories about the Nazis and the horrors of the camps they had liberated. But almost no one listened. The citizens of Ehrenheim made excuses: they had no radios, no money for newspapers; they were too busy clearing rubble, rustling up food, mourning their dead. Or they maintained that it was all Allied propaganda. Look at how the Americans treated their German prisoners—locking them in open-air cages along the Rhine! they argued. What was the difference? Marianne was enraged by their disinterest. Didn’t they want to know what happened in the camps, especially if—as they all insisted—they didn’t already? Anyway, the idea that they had been ignorant was hogwash. Wasn’t that why the German troops had fought until the bitter end? And why the Ehrenheimers had holed up in the castle, terrified of the advancing Americans? They were afraid they would be punished for their country’s sins. Goebbels and Himmler and Hitler himself had all but spelled it out in their absurd exhortations over the past year and a half: fight until the bitter end or pay the price. For what we’ve done was implicit. They had known but not known. That was closer to the truth. That was something Marianne understood.