Someone Named Eva

Eva senses changes in the house and the world. Elsbeth tells her that Germany is struggling in the war and the Allies are advancing. Mutter is anxious and preoccupied. Instead of their usual lessons, Mutter tells Elsbeth and Eva to picnic in the woods behind the house. Elsbeth shows Eva a clearing where Herr Werner and Peter practice shooting, and she shows Eva a gun she uses to practice when the men aren’t around. She teaches Eva how to shoot, and Eva can tell that Elsbeth is a natural marksman.

On their way back to the house, Eva hears someone singing the Czech national anthem. She rushes toward the voice and finds women on the other side of a barbed-wire fence singing. The women are thin and ragged and hammer large rocks as they sing. It is cold, yet few of the women have stockings on their bare legs. Elsbeth tells Eva that this is the prison camp Herr Werner commands, and that the prisoners are mostly Jews and other “very bad people.”

Eva wants to speak to the women in Czech, to see if they know where her father or mother are, but cannot find the words.