Page 56 of The Little Liar

Fannie had also endured an arduous journey home. Hiding in the hills in northern Hungary, it took her months before she felt safe enough to admit her true identity. Eventually, like Sebastian, she was sent to a displaced persons camp, this one in Austria, the very country she had run away from on that snowy day. She slept in a bunk and ate meager rations of food. She waited days to see a doctor. She was constantly fending off unwanted advances of male camp workers, who seemed to act as if she should be grateful they were helping her and tried to put their arms around her waist or kiss her neck.

After months of paperwork, she was finally given train passage to Athens, where she passed her sixteenth birthday sleeping on a cot in a warehouse. In February 1946, more than a year after escaping the death march out of Budapest, she traveled back to Salonika with a young woman named Rebecca who had survived the camps by being a seamstress for Naziuniforms. Rebecca wore a wool skirt made from a camp blanket, and had a scar below her left ear. Her gaze rarely shifted from straight ahead.

When the two of them arrived in Salonika, they were housed in one of the two remaining synagogues in the city, alongside several dozen Jews who had hidden in the mountains. It was a Friday. That evening, for the first time in years, Fannie witnessed a Sabbath service. The sanctuary was dimly lit, and some of the survivors prayed softly. Fannie remained silent. Later the group shared bowls of soup and small portions of chicken.

That night, after most of the others had gone to sleep on the floor, a group of men who’d been part of the Greek resistance huddled around the two new arrivals.

“What’s that on your wrist?” one of them asked Rebecca.

“My number.”

“What for?”

“Every prisoner was tattooed with a number.”

“Why aren’t there more of you?”

“Most died when they got there.”

“Died?”

“Killed.”

“Killed how?”

“Gas,” Rebecca said.

“What happened to the bodies?”

“The Germans burned them.”

A pause.

“That’s true?”

“Of course it’s true.”

The men looked at each other. They shook their heads in disbelief. But one of them, a broad-shouldered, mustached man, leaned forward and pointed a finger.

“Then how areyouhere?”

Rebecca blinked. “What do you mean?”

“They didn’t burnyou. Why not?”

“I... survived.”

“How?”

“I had a job—”

“What kind of job? Who did you collaborate with? Who are you collaborating with now?”

Fannie could not believe what she was hearing. But the truth of the death camps was incomprehensible to most. A lie of collaboration was easier to accept.

“What about you?” the man asked, turning to Fannie.

Another man tried to stop him. “She’s just a teenager—”