“Gazing at Herr Schloss’s six-pointed star of shame, it strikes Renate now that he – that all of them – are not unlike those dead stars Ilse had spoken of. They go about their lives, reading and baking and hoping, sending out the impression of still being fully living, engaged human beings. The truth, though, is that they are simply sending out ghostly light into space, obscuring the fact of their own erasure.”
