On this Christmas Eve, the town was quiet. Usually there were crews of locals digging and raking and clearing the remains of the porcelain factory, which the RAF had mistaken for an armaments plant, but the Americans had given everyone the day off. In the absence of the clatter and bang of reconstruction, Martin could hear new, more ordinary sounds: a baby crying, a door opening and shutting, a gutter rattling in the wind, and a whole host of some hearty, fearless species of bird chattering wildly from the branches of a bare tree.

Martin followed the Grabareks without asking where they were headed. He would do whatever they did—it was an unspoken understanding between them. Wolfgang was the leader. He was younger than Anselm, but stronger and bolder. And they accepted Martin only because he didn’t try to manage their activities or corral them into games the way Fritz did. When they were all together, Martin was the bridge.

They made their way past the church, the frozen millpond, and the bombed factory, through the town square with its billboards plastered with American posters. THESE SHAMEFUL ACTS: YOUR GUILT was emblazoned over photographs of dead bodies, naked, and emaciated, piled like sticks. In one, a boy stared at the camera, squatting behind a barbed-wire fence, his skeleton visible through his skin.

The boys passed these without looking. They had already seen them. When they were first posted, Marianne had marched them all down from the castle to look. “This is what Hitler and his people did,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you his death was a tragedy.” Katarina had begun to cry, and the people walking through the square had glared in their direction. You were not supposed to stop and stare, Martin understood. To stop and stare was to admit guilt: YOUR GUILT, the sign read. You were only “You” if you were the one reading.

But Martin wanted to look at the horrific pictures. Propaganda, the people of Ehrenheim said, but Martin believed Marianne. And in the images he saw the hugeness and menace of the world beyond what he knew—a threat and horror even larger than any he had experienced. The boy in the photograph stared at him like a face glimpsed through a sheet of pond ice. It was as if he lay beneath Martin’s own feet.

Today he kept the brisk pace of Anselm and Wolfgang, though. They continued to the far side of town, down the narrow pedestrian passageways, past the row of fine villas once owned by Ehrenheim’s most prominent Nazis, now appropriated to house DPs. And finally back out in the countryside. The sky stretched above them, as cold and gray as the underbelly of a dead fish. They followed the road through the frozen meadows in the shadows of craggy, snow-covered mountain peaks. They were heading west toward the French zone. The border was not far. And finally Martin understood: they were going to the French camp for German prisoners of war.