and occupied the deserted houses until they were able to move on. Maurice remembers the luxury of a proper bed for the first time in a couple of years. He remembers a Cossack showing him watches all the way up his arm, which Maurice took to be a special sort of jewellery. He remembers his mother going out to forage for food, of the Cossacks racing their horses, of a gun held to his head because with his blonde sister it was thought they might be German. Eventually, he came with his mother and sister, as refugees, to England. Over the months I was working on Second Breath, I realised that to support Maurice's desire to move on, to not always talk again of the horror,

I had to bring in this place, Trobitz. It was here, more than anywhere else that he took a second breath even if at the time he didn't know it. There was no need to refer back to Belsen . I had to go instead to Trobitz. It is a sleepy very rural place, quite beautiful. There is a small memorial to the train rescue. There is also a small museum but we couldn't find it. Maurice didn't come on the trip. We walked around in the soft autumn sun, peaceful. The thought crossed my mind that if I had been dying on that train, it would be better to have died here than in a camp. But hunger and illness probably numbed any awareness of place. And anyway, it was still Germany. For me the visit was a very profound experience.