Chapter 11

Only a few days before Sophia and her friends were to make their escape, the British sent a thousand bombers for a massive air raid on Cologne, and did a vast amount of damage. All of Germany was talking about it, and the Reich was outraged, disregarding their own bombing raid on several historic cities in Britain five weeks before. But Cologne was a harsh blow for the Reich. News of it even filtered into the camp at Ravensbrück, although Sophia and her bunkmates were focused on their plan. Everything was in place now.

She had chosen the wardrobe carefully, and it looked like everything would fit. There was nowhere private for the others to try it on. Sophia had tried hers in the sewing room when no one else was there. She had chosen a simple cream linen skirt, and a pale blue cashmere twin set. She looked like a lady going to a tearoom to meet a friend when she tried it on, and she laughed. It had been so long since she wore anything even remotely like it, before her habit, and prison pajamas. She had picked a black cotton pantsuit with a jacket and simple white blouse for Tamar, which would be easy to wear under the prison uniform, red slacks and a black sweater set for Jo, summer dresses for Hedi and Brigitte that they could stuff into their prison pants, and flat shoes for all. The sizes were a guess but looked right. She had even picked purses for them, which they could put in the bags in which prisoners took water to drink while they were on the job at the factory. They would all look like nice respectable housewives. It had been a challenge to find simple daywear—there were far more evening gowns and fur coats in the mass of confiscated items from wealthy Jewish women being sent back to Berlin for the wives of the High Command to choose from. And she had found some coins in each of the purses, which she was going to use to call people in the network once they reached a safe place to do so.

Sophia and her four friends all went to work that morning as planned, with no diversion from their usual schedule. They had answered roll call at four A.M., and Sophia went to Hans's house after lunch to clean, as she always did on Fridays.

She was quieter than usual and he noticed it, but he knew she was still mourning her father. Learning that he was dead, and had been for a year, was a hard blow. He went through some papers on his desk while she cleaned, and she finished quickly. He offered her food, but she said she wasn't hungry, which was slightly unusual.

"I'll take a few things to the others," she said, and she diligently sliced some bread and ham, and oranges, and took a few biscuits and chocolate bars. Hans's cupboards were well stocked. The best foods were reserved for the officers.

"Are you having a party?" he teased her, and she smiled shyly. "Take whatever you want." He was always generous with her. She wrapped all the ham and bread carefully in wax paper, put it in a small paper bag, and put it under her prison shirt, so it didn't show. It was their only food supply for their escape, and he was their only source of supply.

They chatted for a little while, but she didn't want to linger for too long today. She seemed very serious to him, and she put a hand on his arm before they left his house at the end of the day.

"Thank you for always being so good to me, Hans." He thought there were tears in her eyes when she said it, still upset about her father.

"I care about you a great deal, Sophia. I hope you know that. And I'm so sorry about your father. Maybe I should have told you sooner. I just didn't have the heart."

"It's all right," she said. "Maybe you were right. I don't think the SS knew he had died when they arrested me, or they would have said something."

"They probably didn't know, or they didn't want to tell you. They would have had to check with Dachau, and they wouldn't bother to do that unless someone inquired about him. Sometimes that information travels faster between the camps, with transfers and new arrivals, before it goes to the central records bureau in Berlin, and the news gets upstairs. He obviously wasn't a great danger to the Reich, so once he was arrested, they paid no attention to it after that." But they had put him in a concentration camp anyway, until he got sick and died, if that was really how he died. She'd never know that for sure either.

Sophia was solemn as Hans walked her partway back to her barracks, and he went to check on some papers he was waiting for at his office, and then went home. As always, after she'd been there, he missed her. He loved talking to her. Her spirit seemed to linger in the house after she left. He made something to eat, and then noticed that she had left her water bottle, which was important to the inmates. It was a small bottle they used to collect their water allotment for the day, and they drank it sparingly since it was all they got. He knew she would need it long before he would see her again and didn't want her to be without it. He finished his dinner and was going to take it to her afterward.

At the barracks, Sophia and the others had dressed under their blankets, and were wearing their stolen clothes for the road under their prison uniforms. They were all so thin that two layers of clothing wasn't even noticeable. They each had a bag the inmates made from scraps for their water bottle, and their new shoes were at the bottom. Sophia was carrying the food in hers. She noticed that she had left her water bottle at Hans's but would have to do without it. She couldn't go back for it now.

The factory workers left at six-thirty for an all-night shift. They'd had their ration of soup by then and were ready for work. Sophia and her group stayed close together. No one questioned them or found it unusual that they were going to the factory that night, the other four were already on the truck, and Sophia was about to climb up, when Hans came running up with her water bottle, called her name, and she turned and he handed it to her. He was surprised to see her at the trucks with the factory workers, and she was equally startled to see him.

"You forgot this," he said, and she looked shocked. He stared at her strangely, startled at the look on her face. "Where are you going?"

"We were assigned to some extra work tonight," she said vaguely, and she was normally so honest that he could see instantly that she was lying.

"No, you weren't," he said in a low voice so that no one else could hear. "Sophia, what are you doing?" He looked like the SS officer he was for a minute, and then his face softened, as other women from the barracks continued to get into the truck, and Sophia needed to be on it, or her friends would leave without her.

"Hans," she said, and his eyes stopped her.

"Don't do something crazy," he begged her. "They'll kill you if they catch you."

"I don't care." Nothing was going to stop her, not even Hans.

"I have to report you," he said in a whisper. His eyes were begging her to stay so he didn't have to. As usual, there were no dogs there. Hans was the only thing that could stop them.

"No, you don't," she said in a strong voice. "You don't believe in them either. This madness will be over one day, and you'll be back in the real world of sane people. Don't do anything now you'll regret later." He didn't answer her, but she looked hard at him, and then walked to the truck and jumped in. It pulled away a minute later, and he was still standing there watching her. She could still see his eyes and the torment in them, torn between his sworn duty and his feelings for her. If he warned the guards now, she and her four friends would be killed. If he gave them some time, they could still escape when they got to the factory, and if he didn't report them at all, they might reach freedom. She didn't know what option he would pick. Between his heart and his conscience and the insane government he had sworn loyalty to. And if they suspected he was part of Sophia's plan, in collusion with her, they'd kill him. He had hard choices to make, between love and duty, her life or his, sanity or madness. She was shaking as she sat in the truck with the other workers, and Jo leaned over to ask her in a whisper.

"Why was he there when we left?" She had never trusted him. To her, he was just another Nazi.

"I forgot my water bottle at his house, he brought it back to me," she whispered back. Jo nodded and said nothing, but she had seen that they had both looked like they were about to cry. Something had happened. But Sophia had gotten in the truck anyway, and he hadn't stopped her.

When they got to the factory, all the prisoners got out of the trucks and the whole group walked toward the building, ready for a night's work, Sophia and her group went left when the others went right, and no one paid attention. They hid in some bushes in the parking lot, pulled off their prison uniforms, shoved them deep into a trash can, and hurried onto the street that led to the factory, walking down it with determination and a fast step, in the shoes Sophia had stolen for them. None of them spoke. They cut across a park and down another street, headed toward a wooded area on the edge of the town, and didn't stop until they were well out of sight. Then they sat down on some logs to catch their breath. They had been walking fast for half an hour. They sat there and looked at each other. Tamar couldn't talk, she was so out of breath, but they had made it. No one had stopped them. Hans hadn't alerted the guards as they left, and no one on the trucks realized that they didn't belong there.

"Oh my God, we did it!" Jo said, stunned. "We look like a bunch of rich ladies who ran out on lunch in a fancy restaurant." She had noticed that her red skirt said Dior and her black sweater set Chanel.

They all laughed, and Tamar could breathe again. She had a rattle in her chest.

"Hans could still report us. He may have already. We'd better keep moving," Sophia said, and they continued deeper into the forest and walked for another two hours. They felt safe then—there were no sounds of patrol dogs in the distance, no sirens or gunshots or shouts. They really had made it.

Their destination was a little town called Windberge, which Hedi had suggested. It was a two-day walk from Ravensbrück, which would be less arduous than any day they had survived in the camp. And once there, in Saxony, there were countless small villages where they could seek refuge. Claus had had a contact there that Sophia was going to call. She knew that Claus had placed several children in the vicinity. It was a peaceful rural area of farms and agriculture.

They had no travel papers, so they had to stay out of sight and away from checkpoints and patrols. When they had walked for two hours, Sophia took charge. "Let's try and sleep for a while," she suggested, and the others agreed, "and we'll start again before the daylight." They took small sips from their water bottles and lay down on the leaves on the ground. They had no blanket to lie on, but the ground was soft and the night was warm.

They slept for a few hours, woke up early, while it was still dark, and were eager to move on. By morning, the camp would know that they'd escaped when they didn't answer roll call, and there would be search parties and patrols with dogs looking for them. The five women had to put as much distance as they could between them and the camp. And they had two days of walking ahead of them.

They had to wake Tamar, but she was alert and willing when she woke up. She couldn't walk as fast as they could, but she pushed as hard as she was able, and they took turns giving her a supporting arm when she got too tired to move faster.

"Don't worry about me," she insisted. "Just keep going, I'll catch up." But she was pushing herself to her limits, and they knew it, and weren't going to abandon her, even if she slowed them down.

In the flat shoes Sophia had gotten them, they walked all day, despite blisters, tired legs, aching feet, and rough terrain. They stopped once to eat Hans's food, but they were used to hard labor now with very little sustenance to fuel them, and they kept going. Sophia guessed that they had covered about forty miles that day, according to their plan to stay in the country and go where it would be easier to hide and ultimately fit in. But they needed papers before they could take the risk of running into patrols.

On the morning of the second day, they had stopped at a village, and Sophia went to a phone box, used the coins she had brought, and dialed a number she still remembered, a friend of Claus's she had met a few times at meetings. Max was one of Claus's prime contacts when he needed new papers for a child, in a different name. And Max had been transporting children since the war began. He ran a group that had been doing it now for several years. He had been an artist and engraver before the war and had been using his skills to create papers so people could escape.

She gave him her first name, and the code word Claus had given her, and he recognized her immediately. She told him where she was. He didn't ask and she didn't tell him she was on the run, but he guessed it because she'd called him.

"Where are you headed?" he asked her.

"Windberge. I think we can get there by tonight, on foot. There are five of us, all women." He gave her more precise directions for their walk that day, where there were forests, and they could navigate safely.

"Call me when you get to Windberge, I'll have someone meet you there. I want to get you to Ahnsbeck, to a convent called St. Blaise. I'll meet you there with everything you need. You'll be safe there for as long as you want. I'll have the papers with me. We can take the pictures when you get to the convent."

"I can't thank you enough." She had tears in her eyes when she said it. "And, Max, we have no money," to pay for their travel papers. All they had were the coins she had left, to call him.

"Neither do I." He laughed. "Let's say I'm doing it in memory of our friend Claus. He would come back and haunt me forever if he thought I wouldn't help you."

"Thank you." The women had another day's long walk ahead of them. And Max repeated that the nuns at St. Blaise would take care of them, and they would be safe with travel papers in their new names.

They continued walking after the call and were soon in another forest Max had described. The area they were walking through wasn't highly populated, and the terrain was easier than the day before.

Sophia and the three younger women had gotten used to the pace of the forced march and Tamar was visibly struggling to keep up. Her health had deteriorated in three years in the camp, with the trauma, the beatings, the starvation, the illnesses she had managed to stave off, and those she had succumbed to. Sophia suspected as a nurse that she had problems now with either her lungs or her heart or both. But Tamar was still continuing gamely.

They all talked very little to save their strength. They were looking rumpled now, but the quality of the clothes they were wearing served them well, and lent respectability to them any time they had to cross an open road to get to another wooded area. They were a funny little group of women you'd expect to find playing bridge, except that their hair was somewhat bedraggled, short but not shorn, their faces were very pale, and they were shockingly thin. But from the distance, they looked normal. None of them even had a hairbrush, and they hadn't seen lipstick since they'd been arrested and sent to camp. At close range, they looked a little dubious, from afar, they looked fine. But they saw no one on the way.

They stopped for lunch and ate the last of Hans's ham. There was still bread and biscuits left, and an orange they sectioned carefully and shared, and then they walked on. By nightfall, the towns and landmarks Max had mentioned began to appear, and they knew they were approaching Windberge. They were almost there when Tamar fell twice, and they could see that they could force her no further. They found a place to stop in the woods, and Sophia volunteered to walk into the small village to call Max so he could send his contact to pick them up.

There was a road close to the forest, but no sound of cars. They were sure they were safe there, as they lay on the ground, recovering from the long walk that day. Tamar fell asleep, exhausted. Sophia could hear the rattle in her chest as she slept. Sophia was about to set off to walk to the village to find a phone to call Max, when suddenly they heard the roar of a motor, men's shouts, and the barking of dogs. The men were laughing loudly between shouts. All four women sat frozen in terror, the men in the car sounded drunk. The car stopped and the men flashed searchlights into the forest. At first Sophia thought they were looking for them, and then their uproarious laughter made her realize that it was a standard patrol of young soldiers and they'd been drinking, and were having fun, and had nothing else to do. The sounds became more frightening once their vehicle had stopped. They got out, there was more hilarity, their patrol dogs were barking furiously, and if they unleashed them, Sophia and the others knew the dogs would find them. They were very close. Instead, the soldiers shouted into the forest, fired some shots, and drove on. The danger was gone, and Jo turned to signal to Sophia with relief, but didn't see her. She had disappeared. And then Jo looked down and saw her lying on the ground. At first Jo thought she'd fainted, from fear or exhaustion. They turned her over and saw a large bloodstain spreading on her chest. One of the soldiers' random gunshots had hit her. Sophia had been shot.

Jo looked at Hedi and Brigitte. "What do we do now? We can't take her to a hospital, how do we find a doctor?" Sophia was their leader and the others looked panicked.

Brigitte ran to the road, to see what was nearby, if there was a house or an inn, on the other side of the road. Tamar slept through it all. They didn't want to wake her to tell her the bad news, so they let her sleep.

Brigitte was back minutes later and reported to Hedi and Jo. "There's a farm a little distance away. If they call the police, the police will send us back, or to someplace worse, like Auschwitz."

"We don't have any choice. If we don't get a doctor for Sophia, she'll die," Jo said, watching the blood spread through Sophia's pale blue sweater.

Brigitte volunteered to stay with her, and Hedi agreed to go to the farm alone, so they didn't all go and frighten the people who lived there. They were five women showing up out of nowhere at night, clearly on the run from somewhere, and one of them was shot and bleeding. Not exactly the kind of group you want to invite in. Hedi set out alone, running, and reached the farmhouse in minutes. All the lights were out, the house was dark. She could hear cows bleating, and there was a full moon overhead. She knocked on the door and no one answered. She waited and knocked harder, and a light came on. A few minutes later the front door opened and a dour-looking middle-aged woman stood staring at her with a wary expression. Hedi wasn't sure what to say, but all she could do was bare her soul to this woman and beg for help and pray that she didn't betray them. They were at her mercy.

"I'm so sorry to disturb you," Hedi said, feeling frightened of this woman and what would happen if she called the police. "I need your help," she said, near tears. They had come so far, and she didn't want to get caught now, and sent back. "My friends and I are lost. We've come a long way. There are five of us and one of us is hurt," Hedi said simply. It had the ring of truth as the woman looked her over.

The woman stared at her, wondering if it was some kind of trap. "I'm here alone with my children, my husband died last year, in Russia." She looked as though she had seen a lifetime of hard times.

"Do you have a barn where we could stay? And is there a doctor somewhere nearby? We're on our way to Windberge to meet a friend, and from there to Ahnsbeck, to the convent of St. Blaise."

"They're not real nuns. They're Protestants," the woman said sourly. It was the least of their problems. "Where are your friends?"

"In the woods. We'll have to carry the one who's hurt." Hedi didn't want to say she'd been shot.

"All right, you can sleep in the barn tonight, but you have to go tomorrow." She was nicer than she looked, and Hedi said they'd be back in a minute. She ran to the woods to where she had left the others, to tell them, and found Jo and Brigitte crying.

"Is she okay?" Hedi asked, panicked.

"Tamar is dead," Jo said in a strangled voice. They had seen so much death, but it still mattered, and they were so close to freedom, but not there yet. "She died in her sleep."

"Oh my God. We can stay in the woman's barn. She wants us out tomorrow, but we can get to the convent, if we can move Sophia. We'll have to leave Tamar tonight and come back tomorrow." She didn't want to lose two of them. They had no choice but to leave Tamar for now. They gently moved her behind some bushes. She looked like she was sleeping.

Hedi and Brigitte took turns carrying Sophia through the woods and across the road to the farmhouse where the woman was waiting for them. They were an unholy group, carrying Sophia, unconscious and covered with blood. They wanted to get out of sight quickly in case the soldiers came back that way.

"Where's the fifth one?" the woman asked, and there was nothing to say but the truth.

"She's dead," Hedi and Jo said in unison. The woman didn't say a word and led them to the barn. She used a pitchfork to scrape the straw away, which revealed a trapdoor they helped her open. They carried Sophia down the stairs and laid her on a narrow bed. There were a table and chairs, and the woman lit a lamp on the table, as they all looked at each other. She saw the bloodstained sweater Sophia was wearing. The white skirt was smeared with it too.

"I'll call the doctor," the owner of the farm said. Sophia hadn't stirred. "You can trust him," she added at the look of panic in their eyes. They had been lucky with the farm they chose.

Hedi, Brigitte, and Jo sat at the table in the lamplight and watched Sophia, and a short while later, the trapdoor opened again, and an old man with gray hair and a weathered face carrying a satchel came down the stairs with the woman. She said his name was Dr. Herman. She introduced herself then as Ulla.

The doctor walked over to Sophia, raised her sweater, and examined her. "How long ago was she shot?" he asked them.

"About half an hour ago," Jo answered. "It was a patrol, they were drunk. They didn't know they shot her, and neither did we until we saw her on the ground."

"The bullet just grazed her and exited through her arm," he said after he examined her. "She's in shock. You need to keep her warm. The wound looks worse than it is." He bandaged Sophia and she stirred when he was finished.

She opened her eyes and asked the others in a weak voice, "Did they find us?"

"No, we're fine, except you got shot by the patrol." There was time to tell her about Tamar later.

The doctor had packed the wound with antibiotic powder, which was all he had, bandaged it, and given her something to sleep, and he told them to keep it dry, keep her warm and let her rest, and call if the wound started bleeding again. And then he left with Ulla.

"Do you think she'll report us?" Hedi asked Brigitte with a look of terror. She couldn't go back to Ravensbrück.

"No. If she were going to, she'd have called the police instead of the doctor." They were too tired to think now, and in shock themselves.

"We have to try to get to that convent tomorrow," Jo said. Without papers, they were dead if they ran into another patrol. "We should call Max in the morning, if Ulla lets us use her phone." The farm looked dirt-poor. And they had to go back for Tamar, if the nuns could help them.

They took turns watching Sophia all night, and in the morning, Ulla brought them fresh milk from the cow and some bread. She let them use her phone, and Sophia gave them the number to call Max. They called him and he promised to send someone to pick them up and take them to St. Blaise.

When they went back to the barn, they told Sophia about Tamar. They were all sad about her, but death had become too familiar and not a surprise. Two hours later, Max's contact arrived, and asked for his "sisters." He came in a battered truck. It was old but functional. The convent was two hours away. They thanked Ulla and left. Sophia was wrapped in a blanket, and the others rode with her. They had left Tamar in the woods until the nuns could help them deal with her. They felt terrible leaving her there, but they had no choice for now, and she was out of sight.

There were six warm, welcoming nuns waiting for them at St. Blaise, with Max. They helped them get Sophia to a safe room in the basement. There were children running all through the house, twenty of them, according to one of the nuns.

"They've been here for a year, all orphans," Mother Paul, the Mother Superior, explained to them, and Sophia was sure that they were all Jewish, with false papers. She remembered now Claus mentioning the convent to her. This seemed like the one he had told her about. They never turned him down for a child in danger.

All four women spent the day in the basement beneath a trapdoor, waiting for Max to finish the papers after he took their pictures. At the end of the day, he appeared with five impeccable sets of travel papers, signed and stamped by the Reich. They had new names and identities, and credible documents. The two young men who worked for the nuns brought Tamar back from the woods wrapped in a blanket, and they buried her in the convent cemetery that night, with her friends present to say goodbye. The ground was hard, but the young men were strong and dug the grave.

It had been a harrowing three days since the women left the camp, but they felt as though they had been born again. Sophia's arm was in a sling, and they had dinner with Max and the nuns that night, after they put the children to bed. The four friends were sad about Tamar, but at least she had seen freedom again, even if only for two days. She hadn't died in her bunk in Ravensbrück, or been shot, and her soul was free at last.

The others had decisions to make about where to go, and what to do now. The nuns said they could stay as long as they liked. Sophia made a decision that night, the same one she had made before. Jo wanted to go back to the unoccupied part of France and wait for news of her husband there, if he survived Auschwitz. Brigitte had relatives in Munich whom she trusted and knew would take her in. And Hedi wanted to try and get to Portugal, which was neutral. Some of her artist friends were living there. Germany felt too dangerous to her now.

Max left the next morning, and Sophia spoke to Mother Paul after he left. She was the kind Mother Superior who had taken them in so generously. Sophia had her arm in a sling and explained to her that she was a novice of the Sisters of Mercy in Berlin, but she didn't want to go back there and cause trouble for them. They might be under surveillance now, "although I've been gone for eight months," she explained. It felt more like eight years that she had been in Ravensbrück, or eight centuries. Or a lifetime. Freedom felt unfamiliar now, and it felt comforting to be back in a habit again, even if that of a different order.

"I don't want to be a burden to you either. I've been doing work similar to yours for three years."

"We don't transport the children, they come to us, from many different sources," Mother Paul explained, "all over Germany. We keep them as long as they need."

"I think some of the children I escorted came here," Sophia said quietly. She felt at peace there. The moment she entered a convent, she felt at home, and as though it was where she was meant to be. She had felt that way all her life.

"They probably did come here," Mother Paul said about the children. "You're welcome to stay with us, Sister. We're not Catholic nuns though. We're Protestant, if that makes a difference," she said openly.

"None at all, Mother," Sophia said, "if you don't mind."

"We'd love to have you. I think God brought you to us. We can use another pair of hands." Sophia's were willing ones, as was her heart. She had brought three of her friends out of captivity to safety, and the fourth one was at peace. She thought of Hans then, and wondered if he had reported them, and suspected he hadn't, or the patrols would have been after them quickly and relentlessly to recapture them, punish them, and maybe kill them. He was a kind man, but she knew it would never have been possible between them. The pull back to the convent was too strong for her, but he had helped her survive Ravensbrück. She wasn't sure she would have without him, and he had allowed five of them to flee to safety, which redeemed him to some extent for the atrocities of his superiors and the orders he was duty-bound to follow. She didn't love him, but she was deeply grateful to him.

"It's settled then? You'll stay with us, Sister?" Mother Paul asked her. She was only ten years older than Sophia, but she was mature for her years. It was a small convent, with only a few houses in Germany. She explained to Sophia that the previous Mother Superior had died just after war was declared, and Mother Paul had been asked to step into her shoes, which she had done efficiently, as Sophia could see.

"I'd love to stay, Mother." Sophia thanked her, and Mother Paul assigned her a small cozy cell, with a view of the countryside, the farms, and the woods they had come through. It seemed like a safe place to sit out the war, until the country returned to sanity, especially now that she had viable papers. They were flawless, even if fake. Sophia thought of the countless lives Max had saved with the papers he provided.

Sophia told the others in the morning that she was staying, and they were happy and sad to hear it. Happy for her, because she seemed so at ease to be back in convent life. She was wearing the habit of the Protestant order since she didn't have her own. And her friends were sad too, because they thought she was such a wonderful young woman and she deserved a fuller life, one more like theirs.

"You never know," Jo said wisely, looking very French, even in the donated clothes the nuns had given her, which were too big for her. The clothes she had worn to escape in had been covered with Sophia's blood, so they burned them. "One day, a dashing man may come along and sweep you off your feet." She smiled. "But please God, not a Nazi," Jo added, and they laughed. Jo had never approved of the lieutenant's pursuit of Sophia, even though he sent them food which Sophia shared with them.

The others were planning to spend a week or two at the convent, make their plans as best they could now, and then leave. They would be sad to leave Sophia when they did. She had led them to freedom with her daring plan and stolen fancy clothes, but most of all her courage to do it. Only someone very brave could have done what she did. And without her determination and perseverance, they would never have tried.

The night of Sophia's escape from Ravensbrück, Hans Mahler had to make one of the hardest decisions of his life. He had wrestled with his conscience and his duty, and what he owed his country, and his superiors. In the end, a slim young woman had won not only his heart but his mind and his honor, and he had remained silent. Their absence had been duly noted at roll call the next morning, and no one ever knew that he had discovered the plan at the last minute the night before. Sophia had changed something in him, and opened his eyes, in the short time he knew her. She had stayed true to her vows and her beliefs the entire time. She was the strongest spirit he had ever met, a holy woman, he thought now. He knew he would never forget her. His heart ached for her, but he understood now that she could never have been his. And saving her life and the lives of the other four women had changed him, and he hoped atoned for some of his sins, committed in the name of the Reich. All he wanted now was for the war to end. And he hoped that Sophia and her friends were safe.