All the Light We Cannot See

In January 1945, Jutta and the four other girls remaining in the Children’s House are transported to Berlin with Frau Elena, to work at a machine-parts factory. Berlin is bombed every night through the spring. The Reich falls apart: the mail stops, young boys are shot in the streets as deserters and children are killed by falling bombs. Jutta and the other women work moving rubble from the bombings and clearing the streets.

Jutta receives notice that Werner has been killed.

The Russian army closes in on Berlin and all of the women fear what will happen to them when the soldiers arrive. They are raped by three Russian soldiers who find them in the factory. Jutta hears one officer repeating a list of names while he rapes her; she assumes that they are the names of fallen soldiers.

Etienne rents the same apartment that Marie-Laure grew up in. They wait daily at the train station, scanning the faces of each arrival, and read the newspapers hoping to see her father’s name. He could be on his way home: he could be long dead. Dr. Geffard, the mollusk expert, waits with them. When Marie-Laure goes to the museum, the staff tell her they are searching everywhere for her father.