Summary
As the group advances toward the port, Florian recalls his last conversation with his father, who claimed that Lange was using Florian. When Florian returned months later to seek his father’s advice, it was too late.
A German soldier stops their group and asks for Florian’s identification papers. Florian hands him a folded paper and the soldier calls him Herr Back and salutes him, saying “Heil Hitler!” Suddenly, a bomb explodes right behind them. Joana tries to run toward the crowd to offer medical help, but the soldier blocks her and ushers them forward. Florian is nowhere to be found. Emilia tries to run after him but the group holds her back.
Florian’s folded paper is a special pass that he forged. He shows it to another soldier, who assures Florian that he can get him across the lagoon first thing tomorrow. Florian did not have time to forge new identity papers, and he worries that Dr. Lange may have already discovered the missing piece from the museum and wired ahead to alert the soldiers at the port.
The planes that dropped the bomb shot through the ice and the refugees must wait in the village overnight until the lagoon freezes over again. They plan to cross in the morning. Joana gives Emilia the identity card of the Latvian woman who they found dead on the side of the road. She instructs Emilia to let down her blonde hair and to reveal her pregnancy so that she appears older.
The refugee group approaches the registration point nervously. Joana tells Ingrid that the inspection soldier is blond and has a blue scarf. Ingrid says she can see a little bit and tells the soldier she likes his blue scarf. He holds the scarf out, she extends her hand, and he gives her the scarf. Meanwhile, the shoe poet distracts the soldier by offering to provide him with a heel cup to help his ailing foot. The group passes through the registration point without problems. They settle into the town’s crowded cathedral and Joana tries to help sick refugees. She realizes something is missing from her suitcase.
Meanwhile, Alfred prepares the Wilhelm Gustloff to receive passengers. Germans of priority will occupy the passenger cabins, while other refugees will crowd into the ship’s public spaces. The ship has only twelve lifeboats; the other ten are missing. Alfred steals a stack of boarding passes as a memento and worries that Hannelore may already be dancing with someone else.
At the cathedral, Florian hides in an organ pipe. He opens the small box in his pack to reveal a tiny amber swan. The swan was Hitler’s favorite piece from the Amber Room, a room filled with riches that was created in Prussia and eventually gifted to Russia. In 1941 the Nazis stole the contents of the room and secretly shipped them to the museum in Königsberg. As the Russian forces approached, Lange and Koch planned to steal the riches, using Florian as a scapegoat. They hid the boxes in a secret bunker, but Florian stole the key to take revenge on Lange, and the swan to take revenge on Hitler.
In the morning the group wakes up to cross the frozen lagoon. Ingrid goes first so that she will be able to sense if the ice is strong enough. No sooner does the rest of the group follow than Russian planes shoot overhead. Ingrid is shot and falls through the ice and drowns. Both Joana and Emilia try to run after her but Florian appears and holds them back. Emilia comforts Joana and puts Florian's arms around her.
Several hours later, the ice refreezes and they cross. Joana is angry with Florian but the shoe poet says he saved both her and Emilia. A soldier approaches the group of refugees and Florian shows his special pass signed by Erich Koch. The soldier questions Florian about where he’s going and why he’s wearing civilian clothes, but he acts confidently. He explains that the group helped him when he was injured and says they need a boat to Gotenhafen as soon as possible.
Analysis
In this block of sections, the setting of the novel shifts from the Prussian forest where the refugees have been hiding, toward the port where Alfred’s crew is preparing ships for Operation Hannibal, one of the largest evacuations by sea in history. Salt to the Sea is a novel of historical fiction, meaning that while the characters and stories are fictional, they are based on real historical events. Both the MV Wilhelm Gustloff and the Amber Room really existed.
The Wilhelm Gustloff took off from the port of Gotenhafen on January 30, 1945, with German officials and civilians, as well as refugees from Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Estonia and Croatia, on board. Prussian royalty created the Amber Room in 1701. In 1716 they presented the room to the Emperor of Russia, Peter the Great, as a gift. Some eyewitnesses claim that the Germans loaded crates containing the contents of the Amber Room onto the Wilhelm Gustloff.
In Salt to the Sea, as the group of refugees approaches the port, a soldier asks Florian for his identification documents. When Florian shows his forged special pass, the soldier extends a “Heil Hitler!” and Florian responds in the same way. Pointing to the group of refugees, the soldier asks Florian, “Are they with you?”
The soldier’s question is significant in the larger context of the novel. He seems to be asking if Florian is with Nazi Germany and Hitler, as indicated by his salute, or if he is with the group of refugees that includes a Lithuanian and a Pole, people who are inferior according to Nazi ideology.
Ultimately, Florian chooses to stick with the group and he tries to help them. In this way, he acts as a foil to Alfred. As a Prussian, he is also German and the Nazis would have viewed him as a member of the “master race.” Yet unlike Alfred, he rejects the system imposed by Hitler. By stealing Hitler’s favorite piece of art from the Amber Room, Florian is committing an act of rebellion against the regime.
In addition to learning Florian’s secret, in this part of the book we begin to learn more about Joana’s secret. She is haunted by guilt because she feels that she left her family behind in Lithuania to die. To the rest of the group, Joana is a mother figure. She is kind and takes care of everyone around her. This contrasts starkly with how Joana sees herself as a murderer.
The swan that Florian carries in his pack is just one of many birds that appear in Sepetys’s novel. Emilia recalls a legend about birds, in which seagulls represent the souls of dead soldiers, owls the souls of women, and doves the recently departed souls of unmarried girls. She wonders if there is a bird for the souls of people like her, foreshadowing that something bad may happen to her. She often thinks of the stork she saw above the barn and the stork that left her home in Lwów the day her mother died. She feels certain that no one knows her secrets, except maybe the ravens that nested above the cold cellar at the Kleist’s farm. In Salt to the Sea, birds seem to represent both life and death, both the possibility of escaping to freedom and the condition of being forced to migrate due to persecution.
In Nazi Germany, people’s freedom or persecution is determined by their identification papers and passes. Emilia’s lack of papers means she has no future. However, she uses fake papers in the hopes of escaping to safety on board a ship. Meanwhile, Florian must forge a special pass to avoid getting into trouble. Sepetys contrasts the refugees’ struggle to board a ship with Alfred’s fate: he is so privileged that he brags about stealing boarding passes. He does not even seem to realize that every boarding pass he steals means a refugee in need is unable to board the ship.
