Later, she was almost paralysed by fear when she had to enter 24 classrooms in turn to have a Nazi teacher's denunciation of her read out to her peers and neighbours. Her pride was hurt when her schoolmates then jeered at her for being 'stupid' and a 'coward'.

She had to battle time and again with a rebellious, wild spirit that challenged her perception of Christ-like conduct. She 'got mad' with her teachers, her classmates, her parents. Sometimes she even felt unable to assuage her anger by confessing it to her mother: 'I decided not to tell my mother anything about my problems of school. Mum didn't have to tire herself out worrying about me. . . Keeping the whole matter secret from Mum increased the pressure, but I slowly learned to lean on God alone.'

Soon Simone was really alone, "standing in a uniform, barefoot and dumb," as she is bundled out of school in disgrace and sent across the Rhine to a German reformatory for immoral girls. In this cold institution she had none of childhood's rights, "nothing, absolutely nothing, not even privacy." No talking, no chatting, no running, no playing, no singing, no friendships, no education, no toys, no dolls, no pictures - all were banned for these children: one bath a year, one letter a year, hair washed once a year.

She flies into rages over injustice, risks punishment to get food for a girl who had beaten into subjection, feels bitter about the 'teachers'' stealing the girls' meagre rations, but comes close to despair when she mistakenly believes her parents have been killed. She comes close to accepting the place as normal, her only home, feeling "deeply attached to the place. . . I didn't care any more when children were punished. They were so stubborn - worse than animals! . . I secretly decided I wanted to stay in the home as a maid."