Gita and Cilka, along with the other women, are marching through the snow. They have not seen Cilka or Ivana. They march all day, their number steadily dwindling as women fall to exhaustion. At night, Dana falls to her knees, too exhausted to go on. Gita stays with her. Dana tells four Polish girls to take Gita away. Dana is left behind.

At daybreak, they reach a field where cattle wagons are waiting. Gita makes a break for it with the Polish girls. They run to a nearby house as the Nazis load the wagons with prisoners. The homeowners give them hot drinks and bread. The man of the house says they cannot stay, though he does remove the red slashes from the back of their coats. The man “gives them the address of a relative in a nearby village, as well as a supply of bread and a blanket” (215).

En route to the address they are given, they ask a woman for directions. She kindly escorts them. The woman in the house they arrive at is horrified, as the helpful woman is a senior SS officer.

An older woman “makes a fuss over the girls, taking them into the kitchen, sitting them at the table” (216).