The Girl With No Name [antikvár]

Prologue Hanau, Germany, 9 November 1938 i Tews out! Jews out! Jews out!' The chanting grew ever nearer J and was accompanied by bangs and crashes and cries of terror. The Becker family huddled in their kitchen with the lights off and all the curtains in the apartment drawn against the night and against the terrifying sounds from the street below. Their apartment was on the first floor of the building. Once Franz Becker had had his surgery on the ground floor, but that had long since gone, taken over by a neighbour when the new laws forbade Franz from practising as a doctor. But the house and the apartment were marked. Marta pushed her children, Lisa and Martin, into the small broom cupboard, and saying, 'Lisa, you have to! Be brave!' she closed the door firmly on Lisa's frightened eyes. She knew that her daughter was terrified of being shut in small places, she always had been, but it was for her own safety and Marta had to be strong for them all. As the baying crowd passed along the street, Marta crept under the kitchen table. Bricks were hurled through the windows and shards of glass showered down on the table where she crouched, curled into a ball in an effort to protect herself from the flying splinters. The sound of excited chanting moved on, but even as Marta crept from beneath the table and was opening the broom cupboard, there was the sound of boots on the staircase and the door to the apartment was kicked open. Two storm troopers burst in, one holding a pistol, the other armed with a long wooden club. They