After Mutti and Greta, Thereza is the best thing about life here. She sneaks through the barracks, up and down the lanes, jumping over the walls in a way that makes my heart hurt with jealousy.

But mostly with love.

She is so tiny you would think she were a kitten, but I don’t think she is. I think she just has no home, no mother, no one to feed her.

And in that respect, she is even worse off than we are.

So I make sure that I save at least something for her every day. I save the scraps under our mattress. It’s a dangerous thing to do because it encourages rats. But so far, I’ve managed to give Thereza some carrot peel, a tiny piece of potato and, one time, a few crumbs of bread.

I could get more if I was like some of the people in here. At mealtimes, sometimes you have to pretend that you can’t see the lengths people go to in order to try to get some nutrition into their bodies.

I’ve seen some of the older women plunge into the empty vats, scraping them with spoons to find one more mouthful. I’ve even seen women scrape the food table with their knives, searching for one last crumb.

Mutti nudges me and tells me not to look when they do it. ‘Only by turning away can you give them back the dignity they have forgotten they possess,’ she says.

I think about it a lot. The idea of turning away. We do it here so the women will not feel their shame exhibited. But what about beyond this place? What about the turning away that is happening out there?

Sometimes I feel that the whole world has turned away from us. Not for the sake of our dignity, but to uphold their lives, their rights and privileges. Their lies.

The guards have finished the punishment. The men have stopped screaming. They are both lying on the ground, motionless. One of the guards orders two men to take them away. Then he wipes the sweat from his forehead and addresses us all. ‘If you received a slip of paper with a number on it last night, you must come to the transport station now.’

Mutti grips my hand. I’m grateful for the contact. She earths me. I squeeze her hand and then we both let go.

As the crowds fall out in different directions, I already have my good thing for today to share with Greta later: I wasn’t one of the ones who received a slip of paper. Another day has passed without being transported.

And it’s strange because if you looked around at the life we live here, you would surely think every one of us would want to get away.