Summary

Frau Elena and four girls including Jutta Pfennig, who is now fifteen, are moved to Berlin from Essen to work in a factory for machine parts. They work ten hour days, with only one day off in seven disassembling and stacking usable metal to be hauled away. Food is scarce, death is everywhere and rumors fly. Most of the metals salvaged sit waiting on railways unused. By the fall they are back in Zollverein and it is there that two letters arrive announcing Werner’s death in two different locations. Atrocities occur and Frau Elena and the girls are not unaffected. The Russians find them, use them, and leave after the youngest fires two shots into the ceiling.

Etienne takes Marie-Laure back to the same apartment in Paris that she and her father shared. Together, they search papers, listen to broadcasts...