Summary

Cilka learns that new mothers and children stay in a care facility for two years, though after four weeks the mother goes to work daily in the mines. Ill babies are neglected; only the strong survive. Petre, the maternity doctor, visits the nursery at Cilka’s request and takes the sick ones for treatment. More attention and resources are placed into the nursery. In Chapter 14 the hut mates begin making baby clothes; Josie is pregnant. Josie, at eight months pregnant, walks naked into the bitter cold and snow. Cilka finds her unconscious. Josie recovers but stays in the maternity ward until she gives birth to a baby girl. Cilka does not tell her that after two years, her baby girl will be sent to an orphanage. In the women’s hut, a new prisoner takes Josie’s former bed, a sixteen-year-old girl named...