dusty square in front of the huts. One or two looked afraid, not knowing where they might be sent next and what fate awaited them there. But most just stood with their eyes cast downwards, scarcely able to care. Vivi caught her eye and smiled, encouragingly.
‘Eyes forward,’ snapped the guard.
The women stood, swaying in the summer sun that beat down on their shaven heads protected only by thin cotton headscarves, until at last they were ordered to begin walking. The bedraggled, starving line of women filed out through the gates of the camp and followed the guards to the train station, where a line of trucks was drawn up alongside the platform.
‘Please God, not again,’ Claire prayed, remembering the long, slow journey that had brought them to Flossenbürg in the first place. A guard pulled open the heavy sliding door of one of the trucks and at first Claire couldn’t make sense of what she saw. Slowly, squinting against the strong sunlight, in the darkness inside the wooden carriage she made out a tangled heap of blue and white striped cloth and pale limbs. Dark eyes gazed up at her, sunk into skull-like faces. And then she realised that these were women. The stench of death made her cover her nose and mouth, as the guard hastily pulled the door shut again.
‘Next carriage,’ shouted an SS officer, waving them further down the platform. In silence, the women climbed into the empty cattle truck that awaited them. The wooden door rolled closed, shutting out the light, and a few minutes later the train lurched forward.
The battle for Paris raged through the streets of the city for four days. Mireille listened to the radio broadcasts as reports came in that the Resistance fighters had occupied the Grand Palais and were coming under fire from German troops. Skirmishes were breaking out all across the city but, at the same time, columns of German vehicles had been seen moving down the Champs-Élysées, retreating eastwards.
The next night, the pitch of the broadcasts changed again, becoming even more frenzied. ‘Take heart, citizens of Paris!’ cried the announcer, ‘the Second French Armoured Division is on its way. A vanguard is at the Porte d’Italie right now. Rise up and fight to take back your country!’
From the road below came the sound of running feet and volleys of shots.
But then she heard something else. She pushed her feet into her shoes and ran downstairs, hurrying towards the river again for the first time since she’d helped build the barricades on the Pont Neuf. She joined a growing flood of people taking to the streets of their city and, one by one, they added their voices to the song.
‘La Marseillaise’ rang through the streets as French and Spanish troops, in American tanks and trucks, opened fire on the German fortifications.
When they’d boarded the train at Flossenbürg, Claire and Vivi hadn’t known where they were being taken, or how long the journey would last. But after just a few hours’ jolting progress, the train jerked to a halt.
The women lifted their bowed heads at the sound of shouted commands and then they heard the cattle-car doors being pulled back. At last their own carriage was opened and they helped one another down, blinking in the evening sunshine. They turned their faces away from the piles of bodies that were being unloaded from further up the train and stacked beside the railway tracks. Male prisoners in the ubiquitous striped uniforms were loading the corpses on to handcarts and wheeling them away.
Those who were still alive were ordered into lines and herded alongside the train to a high, white gatehouse. As they walked, one of the other women fell into step alongside Claire and Vivi.
‘Are you the ones from Flossenbürg?’ she asked, keeping her voice low so it wouldn’t be heard beneath the sound of shuffling feet. ‘I saw the name when we stopped at the station.’
Claire nodded.
‘And you?’ asked Vivi. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘Further north,’ replied the woman. ‘A place called Belsen. I’m hoping this camp will be a bit better. It certainly can’t be any worse.’
‘Do you know where we are?’
‘I heard one of the guards say we were being sent to Dachau. Away from the bombing in the north. They’re building new factories here, to replace the ones that have been destroyed. So they need more workers.’
‘Silence!’ roared a guard. ‘Keep moving there!’
As they filed through the archway of the gatehouse, Claire lifted her eyes to read the