Cassie McCullagh

She wrote the book having fled Germany and then indeed having to flee France.

So it was published while she was in exile.

But it's very vivid writing.

in the context of the rise of fascism.

But Cassie and Martin, I want to hand over to you to explain this book to us.

Well, I guess it makes sense, Martin, to explain the seven crosses, which do make it quite clear.

There's a concentration camp called West Hoven.

Seven prisoners have escaped.

Different types of people have come from different backgrounds and one by one they're caught and the commandant of the camp, when they are found, they're brought back in and there's seven trees in the courtyard of... Plain trees.

That's right.

And these prisoners are beaten to within an inch of their life or killed and their bodies or they are still alive when they're hung up on these crosses.

That's right.

And this becomes this enduring symbol, this incredibly powerful symbol for the other internees, the ones who are still there wondering what's happened to George Heinzler.

And everything that Anna Seegers describes in those early chapters, that bucolic countryside and the people cycling off to the Herkst factory or going to till a field or a shepherd, you know, on his crooked knee.

Drinking cider, sun, strudels, you know, just...

Kind of nice.

Children with braids.

Yeah.

And it actually, it is all just a facade.

It's all just a pretty sort of chocolate box scene because what's underneath is this knowledge, whether it's acknowledged or not, of what's really going on.