Hanna is still being dramatically questioned as the trial precedes, and Michael can see how exhausted she is. She isn't the pretty face he used to know; now she looks older, and has wrinkles and dark circles under her eyes. Michael still stares at her all day, and wonders if she even notices him. He is trying to wipe away the old memories of her, but every time he sees her they come rushing back.
Pretty much all of these next few chapters are about the trial. All of the defendants "stab Hanna in the back" by ratting her out and blaming her for everything. The main thing that she was accused of was writing the false report about all the Jewish women and children dying in the church fire. Hanna was indeed a guard when that happened but she couldn't do anything to stop it. The church doors were locked from the outside, when the bombs struck the church steeple blew up into flames and no one knew what to do. Michael began to put together all of the facts and figured out that Hanna really was telling the truth, there was no way she could have written that report. You see..Hanna has a secret. She is illiterate. She doesn't know how to read or write, that is why she always made Michael read to her. She doesn't want to expose her secret so she takes all of the blame. Michael tries to talk to her about it, but cannot bring himself face to face with her. He consults his father, who he hasn't seen in years. He seeks advice and his father has a lot of experience with philosophy so he figures he will pay him a visit. Unfortunately his father doesn't give him great advice. Michael doesn't know what to do- he can speak up and save Hanna from years of jail time, or he can keep quiet and feel guilty the rest of his life. What would you do?
As the trial continues the court is forced to travel to Jerusalem in order to talk to some witnessed. During this time Michael spends his free time traveling to as many concentration camps as possible. He has horrible images in his head of what they might be like, so he needs to see them for real. He doesn't have a car, so he hitchhikes all the way there. Ironically he ends up in a car with a guy who was supposedly a guard at one of the camps. When the guy found out where Michael was headed he threw him out of his car immediately and drove away. After seeing the camps Michael was in shock. He didn't know what to think. After two weeks in Jerusalem they headed back to Germany. The trial continued and finally the jury was ready to read the verdict. The verdict took several hours to real and in the end Hanna received life in prison. while the other defendants only received short jail sentences.
This part of the book took place mainly in part two. I thought it was kind of confusing throughout the whole trial experience. Michael kept flashing back to old memories and fast forwarding into the future, I couldn't keep the present straight. When I found out Hanna was taking all of the blame for something she didn't do I couldn't believe it. Through out the whole book Hanna was portrayed as a strong, independent woman, and when she didn't stand up for herself she looked weak and cowardly. After her verdict was read I was in shock again, wouldn't you think exposing a secret would be better than going to jail for life? We will see what happens in the end, I am in part three so I am almost done. I can't wait to see what happens in the end.
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