Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize 2025The knock on the door changed everything. Until then, we were happy; we knew who we were. ‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ I told him. ‘My wife is gentle and kind. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ In 1939, when she was just nineteen years old, Hermine Braunsteiner applied for a job in a new prison which had opened near her home. She had heard that the pay was better than working on the factory line. The prison was called Rav...