Salt to the Sea

These pages comprise 12 short sections that move the characters farther along their treacherous journey. After everyone is asleep in the barn, Joana removes embedded shrapnel from Florian’s infected wound. Emilia watches protectively. Although he is taken with her beauty, Florian refuses to tell Joana his name and accuses her of trying to steal from him. He shares his only cigarette with her, and she confesses, “I’m a murderer” (42). After Joana falls asleep, Florian steals a drawing made by Joana’s cousin from her bag. Sitting nearby, Ingrid senses his violation. A conversation between Eva and Emilia reveals that thousands of Poles have been killed, including Emilia’s dearest friends.

In another boastful letter to Hannelore, Alfred describes the throngs of desperate people arriving in the port, “weary and filthy from their long treks” (38). He is sent to prepare the massive ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, for the thousands of refugees fleeing the impending attacks.

At dawn, Florian leaves the barn, determined to get to the port without distraction. He recalls his bittersweet days as a gifted restoration apprentice in a museum, working for the manipulative Dr. Lange, one of Hitler’s cronies. Emilia chases after him, afraid to trust the others. When Florian tells Emilia she’s safer with Joana’s group, Emilia hopelessly reflects, “Safer? He didn’t realize. I was already dead” (47). Florian gives Emilia the dead German’s gun and tells her to “go away” (53).

When the shoemaker declares, “Time to rise. Feet are strongest in the morning,” Joana and the others set out to find an abandoned estate once belonging to Prussian aristocrats (48). Ingrid proves her intuitive ability to “see people” and describes Emilia and Florian to Joana. Joana reveals how she met Ingrid, who had been left stranded at a train station.

Miraculously, the exhausted group eventually finds the ravaged estate.

These pages, containing 15 short sections, begin as Florian and Emilia make their way through the dark forest. Florian gives Emilia a piece of sausage he pilfered from the soldier he shot in the cellar but plans to abandon her that night.

Meanwhile, Alfred observes that “anxiety swelled in the harbor with each minute that passed” (65.) Operation Hannibal, the extensive evacuation, is officially underway. He fantasizes about his homecoming as a war hero and boasts to Hannelore, “I have been selected for a very important mission to disinfect this land” (66). In reality, he is cleaning toilets.

Straggling behind her “knight,” Florian, Emilia spies a German soldier stalking him, gun drawn. She shoots him, then Florian finishes the job and buries the body. They quickly run from the scene.

Joana’s group explores the ransacked mansion and discovers the remains of the aristocrats’ final meal rotting on the table. Ingrid senses danger: “‘I don’t like it,’ she whispered,’ clinging to Joana” (71).

Florian and Emilia see smoke coming from the mansion and walk towards it. Emilia collapses in pain. Joana discovers that Emilia is eight months pregnant and in premature labor. Horrified, Florian wonders, “Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us?” (79).

In the warm firelight, Joana and Florian connect over a bowl of bean soup while the shoe poet and the little boy Klaus bond polishing their boots. The kind old man dances with Joana while Florian admires her. The group plans their upcoming trip across the frozen Vistula lagoon and makes plans to hide Emilia’s (Polish) and Ingrid’s (blind) identities, as disabled people were considered inferior by Hitler. By the hollow sound of his step, the shoe poet notices that the heel of Florian’s boot is hollow and says, “The shoes tell the story” (89). As Joana and Florian raid the kitchen for supplies, Eva’s screams pierce the air as she discovers the Prussian aristocrats murdered in their beds.