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“The Germans had been living in one wing of this hospital, and when one of them was sick, they called upon the nurses to help them. I thought Sister Roza must have witnessed so many incidents of cruelty that I wondered how close she came to surrendering her faith. The Polish people had seen so much suffering. When the Germans retreated, and our little band of skeletons arrived, she learned that the Nazi barbarity was even more widespread than she had thought. She threw herself into helping us.

“She had fear that my mother would not survive, but she nursed her devotedly. She slept in the basement in a little cell. To have nothing during the war must have seemed natural to convent sisters. I did not see the sisters take much nourishment, but they always brought it to us. There were three sisters, a doctor, and two younger nurses, novices. Me, I had lost my faith, but with the example of Sister Roza I was tempted to try to retrieve it. Then I realized I had faith only in the individual, people like Sister Roza and so many courageous women at Koenigsberg—pulling the plow in the mud, sharing their food, sheltering each other. Some people could do this. Others, as you might expect, reduced themselves—I was going to say they became animals, but that is unfair to animals. Animals don’t share, unless it’s a mother animal with her young, but animals have a great dignity—a sense of self, I want to say. They do not betray their nature. They do not practice self-deceptions. Humans have a great capacity for the diabolical. Oh, Marshall, the Nazis invented so many unimaginable crimes. You see I have had time to think all this through!

“We had to speak German there, but Sister Roza had some notions of French from her school days, and she had a worn Polish-French dictionary—a treasure!

“ ‘Where is Ravensbrück?’ she wanted to know. ‘You had friends there? Are they there still?’

“We could hardly explain. After Sister Roza said, ‘I have a brother in a labor camp and I have not heard from him in several months,’ we refrained from revealing the horrors of our camp. We wanted to erase it from our minds for her sake.

“In April, Sister Maria rushed in with news that the Russians had the Germans in retreat from the Oder River.

“ ‘It may be possible soon to write a letter,’ Sister Roza said.

“Maman was rallying. Her cheeks had regained some color and were filling out. She weighed nothing. Sister Roza brought us clean rags to use for our menstruation.

“ ‘We haven’t done this,’ I said. I stopped. We did not have our règles. None of us did. I did not want to tell Sister Roza a hundredth part of what had happened.

“Sister Roza smiled as she tucked the rags into a cabinet. ‘For when you need them,’ she said.

“And then one day I found a blotch of blood issue from me. It was only a small bit. I told Maman, and she rejoiced. I think she ate with better appetite then, and she was sitting up more easily. She still wasn’t walking.

“I was increvable! If I had not been in fine health at the start and so young, perhaps I could not have lasted. I was so fortunate. I do not know why I was so lucky and others were not. I was quite ill, but the doctor there gave me a drug that helped. I think it must have been penicillin, which was new then. The injections were very painful, but pain was nothing to me anymore. It was a miracle. In two weeks I was recovered from the typhus. I was gaining weight, and I was feeling almost rested. I would not have come through so quickly if I had not been determined to live for my mother. I could not bear the possibility that she would lose me. Of course I could not bear the possibility that I would lose her, and I think her principal feeling was that she wanted to live so that I would not be abandoned.

“For a long while after we were back in Paris, we still shared the same bed. We always awoke in the night and clutched each other, and we would moan reassurances. Eventually it was my mother who pushed me to be independent again. At first I was uncertain, but she said,