Gerda learned how Abek reached Landeshut. While at Blechhammer camp, where a friend had secured him an easier position painting, Abek discovered through bribery that Gerda was in Landeshut. Despite warnings about Burgberg’s brutal reputation, he arranged to be transferred there.

Each morning, Gerda and Ilse shared their breakfast with Abek. In the afternoons, she passed him bread through the barbed-wire fence. In mid-December, Italian prisoners arrived at the factory, their presence signaling that the war was turning against Germany. Their condition deteriorated rapidly; on Christmas Day, one was found dead.

Conditions at Burgberg worsened. A pneumonia epidemic struck in January, and the women’s camp began laundering clothes from Burgberg. Gerda volunteered for the grueling Monday detail to see Abek, though their meetings amid bloody, vermin-filled laundry filled her with shame. She became convinced that she had to marry him out of obligation, though her feelings remained conflicted.

Spring arrived in late April 1944, but Abek’s spirits sunk. On May 6, Frau Kügler announced that the camp would be evacuated. Gerda’s 20th birthday, May 8, became her final chance to see Abek. With Frau Kügler’s help, Gerda and Ilse delivered laundry to Burgberg. Unable to face Abek directly, Gerda wrote him a farewell note and gave it to Dr. Goldstein. At dawn on May 9, the women were transferred to SS custody. Frau Kügler, barely controlling her tears, accompanied them to the station and waved goodbye. Gerda reflects on Frau Kügler’s humanity and kindness.

While traveling north to Grünberg, Gerda watched a young, fashionably dressed German woman meet her father at a train station. The scene—the girl’s neat clothes, her loving greeting—caused Gerda sharp pain. She would exchange her life for that girl’s in an instant.

Grünberg was a modern textile camp housing about 1,000 prisoners, with stark divisions between healthy outdoor workers and starving factory workers. Suse, a friend from Landeshut who had arrived in an earlier transport, introduced Gerda and Ilse to Liesel Stepper, a graceful Czech woman who became their friend. Liesel warned them about the Spinnerei, the spinning room where textile dust caused tuberculosis.

The next morning, they met the Betriebsleiter, the camp director, a tall man with a distinctive signet ring that he used to beat prisoners. Gerda witnessed him savagely attack a woman’s face in the shower corridor, leaving her bloody and silent. Horrified and enraged, Gerda vomited afterward.

Despite hopes of avoiding it, Gerda, Ilse, and Suse were assigned to the Spinnerei. The spinning room workers resembled living skeletons. Every two months, the women were X-rayed; those with tuberculosis were sent to Auschwitz. At the end of July, Gerda and Ilse underwent their first X-ray, terrified. Both were declared clear, earning a temporary reprieve. Many years later, Gerda learned that one girl sent away for tuberculosis survived by bribing a guard at Auschwitz with gems that she had miraculously unearthed while trying to escape.

In September, when a piece of bread was thrown over the fence, an SS guard beat 30 women, demanding to know who threw it. Gerda received two blows, shattering her emotional fortitude. When Ilse returned from her shift and saw Gerda’s bruised face, she presented her with a single red raspberry—a precious gift that brought both comfort and tears.

Days later, Gerda and Suse were chosen for new work weighing finished yarn crates. The Obermeister, the head foreman, gave them hard-labor cards entitling them to extra food. Gerda’s new position allowed her to walk throughout the factory. She saw daily deliveries of clothing from Auschwitz being shredded for yarn. Once, she thought that she recognizes her mother’s coat but forced herself to dismiss the thought. To cope with despair, she retreated into detailed fantasies of her family reunion.

On November 30, 1944, the women were held in the courtyard instead of being sent to work. Young female SS guards and army officers arrived. The women were called alphabetically into their barracks, forced to undress completely, and examined while standing in a chalk circle. Gerda received the number 895A. Rumors circulated that healthy women were being selected to sexually service soldiers.

In response, Gerda obtained poison from another prisoner in exchange for the diamond and pearl pendant that her mother gave her. She gave one packet to Ilse, and they hid them in their shoe linings. For two weeks, nothing happened except increasingly harsh morning roll calls in the bitter cold.

In December, air-raid alarms began, occurring almost daily by January 1945. One night, the women were moved to the dining hall as their sleeping quarters were barricaded. New prisoners arrived—Jewish women who had been marching for five days. They reported that Auschwitz had been captured by the Russians and that all prisoners were being marched to Oranienburg to be gassed. Suse was pessimistic about survival, but Gerda insisted that they would be liberated.

At dawn, they received three bread portions each, with no mention of when they would receive food again. Gerda, Ilse, Suse, and Liesel put on most of their clothing. They were marched into a courtyard where their contingent joined women from other camps; the resulting group of nearly 4,000 women was divided into two transports. The four friends ended up in the column that would suffer the highest casualties. Gerda was horrified by the condition of women who had already been marching—some barefoot, leaving bloody trails. She was grateful for the ski boots that her father insisted that she wear, which concealed saved photographs and the poison packet. On January 29, 1945, the death march began. After the first day, they slept in a barn where they had to guard against theft of whatever food was left. On the second day, women who could no longer walk were shot.

After three days of marching, the bread ran out. The guards stopped counting prisoners. Gerda found that she could no longer pray, though she had always prayed with gratitude in the past. On the fourth day, they heard artillery fire and learned that the railway was destroyed, forcing them to walk to the death camp.

On the fifth morning, several SS women had deserted. An SS man pulled Gerda and three others from the column and ordered them to drag two dead women’s bodies into the woods. Gerda washed the blood from her hands with snow before rejoining the march. That night, they were forced to lie in the snow before a church during a windstorm. Gerda roused Ilse and spread word to stay awake, preventing many from freezing. In the morning, numerous women were dead.

They arrived at Camp Christianstadt, received warm food, and rested for three days before marching again. The roads filled with German refugees fleeing the Russian advance, giving Gerda hope. Inspired by hearing a familiar Silesian dialect, she devised an elaborate escape plan: She and Ilse would claim to be German evacuees named Kügler and seek help from the police. She rehearsed every detail with Ilse and told Suse and Liesel of their plan.

As they prepared to slip into the woods, Ilse panicked. Gerda agreed to wait. Moments later, they witnessed the SS commandant execute 14 women caught trying to escape. Gerda vowed never to attempt escape again.

Weeks passed, and the column shrank. Gerda saw a woman break off her own frozen toes and leave them behind. She found the woman beside her dead one morning. The column passed through the firebombing of Dresden, forced to stand on a bridge over the Elbe during the attack. Gerda felt triumph at Germany’s destruction but also profound loneliness. Days later, while passing through Freiberg, piano music from a house made Ilse cry silently as she recalled her own musical past.

The weather turned cold and snowy again as they marched through bombed German cities—Chemnitz, Zwickau, Reichenbach, and Plauen. Around March 20, after marching over 500 kilometers, the remaining 400 women arrived at Helmbrechts camp. Their guards were replaced. They were housed in a barracks with a dirt floor and given different, wet clothing after their own was deloused.

The prisoners suffered from severe diarrhea, with only a single barrel provided at night for everyone. In Helmbrechts, Gerda befriended Lilli, a Hungarian university professor, while watching bodies being collected one morning.

One night, Tusia, a women Gerda knew from Bolkenhain, woke her. Tusia rambled about whether Gerda still believed that they would be free by their shared birthday in May. The next morning, Gerda found Tusia dead in the snow.

Troubled by Tusia’s death and her last words about Gerda’s enduring spark, Gerda resolved to spread hope. She started a rumor that the war would end in days, inventing details about Allied victories. The story lifted morale among many women. Ilse believed that Gerda had a secret source and made her promise to reveal it when safe. Suse and Lilli remained skeptical but said nothing.

One morning, the women were told that they were leaving Helmbrechts. Only 300 prisoners remained. The commandant announced that US President Roosevelt was dead, dating the event to around April 13, 1945. They marched away in the rain.

That evening, Ilse collapsed, unable to walk. Gerda sought out Hanka, a strong prisoner assigned to help the sick, knowing that Ilse would have to ride in the wagon where the ill were kept to eventually be shot. The next morning, Gerda put Ilse in the wagon and climbed in beside her.

As they crossed into Czechoslovakia, kind villagers threw food to them despite SS protests. Someone threw an egg into the wagon, which Gerda gave to Ilse. That night in an orchard, bread that Gerda had saved was stolen while Ilse slept. Gerda scolded her angrily, unable to accept that Ilse was asleep because she was close to death.

Rita Schanzer told Gerda that she planned to escape; the next morning, Rita was gone. Gerda placed a flowering branch on sleeping Ilse’s chest. That evening, they stopped in a meadow. After being forced from the wagon and attending roll call, Gerda found Ilse removed and left with three corpses. Gerda retrieved Ilse’s coat from another prisoner, and Hanka helped move Ilse away from the dead.

Ilse asked for water. An SS guard kicked Gerda away from a brook and then followed and kicked Ilse. Ilse made Gerda promise to survive one more week and asked her not to tell her parents how she died. She recalled a fortune reading that called Gerda lucky. They held hands and fell asleep. At dawn, Gerda woke to find Ilse dead. She felt utterly alone. After Ilse was buried, Gerda climbed into the sick wagon again. A piece of bread was anonymously thrown from a window into her lap, and she divided it among the others.

Allied planes strafed the marching column. Liesel was wounded in the leg. Suse and Liesel, now despairing, decided to ride in the wagon the next day. The next morning, Hanka prevented Gerda from getting back in the wagon, insisting that she walk. After another night left 50 more dead, Gerda overheard guards saying that Adolf Hitler was dead. Suse feared that they would all be killed in revenge.

On the third evening after Ilse’s death, they approached Volary, Czechoslovakia. An SS woman ordered unfit women to stand apart. She pointed at Gerda and commanded Hanka, who was beside her, to take her shoes. The shocking order gave Gerda new determination, and Hanka responded by quickly pushing Gerda behind another girl, out of the SS woman’s sight. The unfit women were loaded onto a truck that departed and never returned.

The remaining 120 women waited in the meadow and then were locked inside a large factory building. Their guards abandoned them. The women heard ticking outside and realized that a time bomb had been set. Czech civilians broke open the door, warning that the bomb failed and that the SS were returning. Gerda and two others hid inside a metal cylinder. Germans fired into their hiding place; a bullet grazed Gerda’s shoulder.

Much later, a Czech man and two women entered, announcing that the war was over. Gerda looked out a window and saw a white flag of surrender flying from a church steeple. She began to cry, watching her tears fall on the dusty windowsill without soaking in.