Vati puts his hand on Mutti’s arm. He strokes her finger. ‘My darling,’ he says, his voice croaking as if it is filled with sawdust, ‘we must give him your ring.’

Mutti makes a sobbing sound that comes out as though she is choking. ‘My wedding ring? It is not enough that these Nazis have taken our home, our possessions, our lives, our dignity? They must have the symbol of our love as well?’

‘I will buy you another one, I promise you. When this is all over, I will put a band of gold around your finger and it will stay there for ever, with my love.’

Mutti doesn’t say anything. But eventually, she nods and silently begins to tug the ring from her finger.

At that moment, one of the SS guards pulls a man out of the line, seemingly for no reason, and drags him to a shed behind the tables. We hear the sounds of a scuffle, the man crying out.

I clap my hand over my mouth. The salty taste of bile is in my throat and I don’t know if I can stop myself from being sick. Each time I think they have treated us as horribly as they can, somehow the guards manage to do something even worse.

For a moment I am grateful that we have barely eaten in days. At least I have nothing to bring up.

A few moments later, the man is dragged out of the shed. His left eye is closed and already swelling. He’s limping. He has blood dripping from his forehead.

‘This is what happens if you try to hide anything!’ the officer shouts to us as he lets go of the man. He stumbles back into the crowd.

My mouth is as dry as the gravelly path under our feet. What if I have something in my bag that I don’t realize is valuable? What if I forget it or miss it and they take me to the shed and—

‘Come on children, hurry,’ Vati says, breaking into my terrified thoughts. ‘Just look through your things and check there is nothing they might want.’

I scrabble through my bag. There is nothing in here. Nothing of any value. At least not to the SS men anyway. My hand grazes the thing of most value to me, besides the people I am with: the photograph of me, Leo and Max. The memory of that day still shines a light inside me and I cannot bear to give it away. To anyone else, it is a fading photograph, a torn scrap of paper. The Nazis would not want this. But I also can’t risk them finding something so precious to me.

I fold it into a cardigan to keep it hidden as I finish rifling through my clothes. ‘Nothing,’ I say.