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was wearing her habit. There was something almost otherworldly about her, and they sensed it, as she looked quietly at them.

They took her back to Cologne that afternoon, and drove her directly to the warehouse where Jews were being held for deportation. She had never seen or imagined anything like it. There were hundreds of people pressed together like animals. People crying, screaming, talking, shoved against the walls and each other. Some had fainted, but there was no room for them to go anywhere, they still stood there. They shoved her roughly in among them, still wearing V茅ronique's old riding boots and the clothes she had worn that morning. She wondered if this was what it had been like when they took her mother and sister away, when they had gone to the marshaling station and then been loaded onto the train to Ravensbr眉ck. Amadea just stood there and prayed, and wondered where she was going. They had told her nothing, and once in the warehouse with the others, she had become just another body. Just another Jew to be sent away.

They kept her in the warehouse for two days, in the freezing cold and stench from all the bodies. They smelled of vomit, urine, sweat, and defecation. All she could do was stand there and pray. And then finally, they loaded them onto a train, without telling them their destination. It no longer mattered. They were just bodies. She had been thrown in with all the Jews they had rounded up and were deporting. People were frantically asking questions as they loaded them onto the train, and Amadea said nothing. She was praying. She tried to help a woman holding a small baby. And a man who was so ill, he looked like he was dying. She knew, as she stood there with them, that she had been put here for a reason. Whatever God intended for her, she had been sent here to share this with them, and perhaps to help whoever she could, even if only to pray.

She remembered what the Mother Superior had said to her the first day, that when she took her final vows, she would be the spouse of the crucified Christ. She was here now to share his crucifixion and theirs. When the train finally left the station after two days, she was faint with hunger and exhaustion, but she could hear the echo of her mother's voice telling her she loved her, and that of the Mother Superior telling her the same thing.

The man next to her died on the third day, and the woman's baby was dead in her arms not long after. There were children on the train and old people, men, women, dead people among the live ones. And every now and then, they would stop, open the doors, and push more people in. Amadea didn't know where they were going, nor did she care, as they made their way slowly across Germany toward the east. No one had any idea what their destination was, and it no longer mattered. All sense of humanity had been stripped from them. Whoever they had once been no longer existed. They were on the train to hell.

17

THE TRAIN STOPPED THIRTY-SIX MILES NORTH OF PRAGUE, in Czechoslovakia, five days after they had left Cologne. It was the third of January 1942. Amadea had no idea how many people were on the train with her, but as they were told to leave the boxcars, people literally fell through the doors. They could no longer walk. Amadea had finally managed to find a small space where some of the time she could crouch. And as she stepped stiffly off the train, she could hardly bend her knees. She only glanced once behind her, and saw the bodies of several old people and a number of children left on the train. One of the women next to her had been holding a dead baby in her arms for two days. Some of the elderly hung back, as the guards were shouting at them to move. She could see that the signs that had been posted nearby were in Czech, which was her only clue as to where they were. It had been an endless trip. A few people were still clutching their suitcases, as they formed long lines as the soldiers ordered. When they moved too slowly, they were roughly shoved with their guns. She could see now, as the lines seemed to stretch for