The next thing, I was wakened by a bustling and flurry of excitement. Outside, the sun was by now blazing in full brilliance. The train was again in motion as well. I asked the boys where we were, and they said we were still in the same place but had just now begun to move on; this time, it seems, the lurch must have awoken me. There was no question however, they added, that factories and settlements of sorts could be seen up ahead. A minute later, those who were at the window reported, and I myself also noticed from a fleeting change in the light, that we had slipped under the arch of some form of gateway. After a further minute had passed, the train came to a halt, at which they informed us in great excitement that they could see a station, soldiers, and people. At this, many started to gather their things together or button up their clothes, while some, women especially, hastily freshened up, smartened themselves, combed their hair. From outside I heard an approaching banging, a clattering-back of doors, the commingling hubbub of passengers swarming from the train; I had to concede there could be no doubt about it, we were indeed at our destination. I was glad, very naturally, though in a different way, I sensed, than I would have been glad yesterday, say, or still more the day before that. Then a tool snapped on the door of our wagon, and somebody, or rather several somebodies, rolled the heavy door aside.
I heard their voices first. They spoke German, or some language very close to that, and from the way it sounded, all at once. As far as I could make out, they wanted us to get off. Instead, though, it seemed they were pushing their way up among us; I could still see nothing as yet. The news was already going around, however, that suitcases and baggage were to be left here. Everyone, needless to say, so it was explained, translated, and passed on from mouth to mouth around me, would get their belongings back later, but first disinfection awaited all articles and a bath for us — and none too soon, I considered. They then got closer to me in the hurly-burly, and I finally got my first glimpse of the people here. It was quite a shock, for after all, this was the first time in my life that I had seen, up close at any rate, real convicts, in the striped duds of criminals, and with shaven skulls in round caps. Naturally enough, I immediately recoiled from them a bit. Some were answering people’s questions, others were taking a look around in the wagon, yet others were already starting to unload the luggage with the practiced skill of porters, and all with a strange, foxlike alacrity. On the chest of each one, apart from the customary convict’s number, I also saw a yellow triangle, and although it was naturally not too hard to work out what that color denoted, it still somehow caught my eye; during the journey I had, in a way, all but forgotten about that entire business. Their faces did not exactly inspire confidence either: jug ears, prominent noses, sunken, beady eyes with a crafty gleam. Quite like Jews in every respect. I found them suspect and altogether foreign-looking. When they spotted us boys, I noticed, they became quite agitated. They immediately launched into a hurried, somehow frantic whispering, which was when I made the surprising discovery that Jews evidently don’t only speak Hebrew, as I had supposed up till now: “Rayds di yiddish, rayds di yiddish, rayds di yiddish?” was what they were asking, as I gradually made out. “Nein,” we told them, the boys and me too. I could see they weren’t too happy about that. Then suddenly — on the basis of my German, I found it easy to figure out — they all started to get very curious about our ages. We told them, “Vierzehn” or “ Fünfzehn,” depending on how old each of us was. They immediately raised huge protestations, with hands, heads, their entire bodies: “ Zestsayn!”[1] they muttered left, right, and center, “zestsayn .” I was surprised, and even asked one of them: “Warum?” “Willst di arbeiten?”—Did I want to work, he asked, the somehow blank stare of his deep-set, drawn eyes boring into mine. “Natürlich,” I told him, since that was after all my reason for coming, if I thought about it. At this, he not only grabbed me by the arm with a tough, bony, yellow hand but gave it a good shake, saying then in that case “Zestsayn!… vershtayst di? Zestsayn!” I could see he was exasperated, on top of which the thing, as I saw it, was evidently very important for him, and since we boys had by then swiftly conferred on this, I somewhat cheerfully agreed: all right, I’ll be sixteen, then. Furthermore, whatever might be said and quite irrespective of whether it was true or not, there were also to be no brothers, and particularly — to my great amazement — no twins; above all, though, “jeder arbeiten, nist kai mide, nist kai krenk”[2] — that was about the only other thing I learned from them during the possibly not quite two whole minutes it took as I moved in the crush from my place to the door, finally to take a big leap out into the sunlight and fresh air.
The first thing I noticed was a vast expanse of what looked like flat terrain. I was immediately a little blinded by the sudden spaciousness, the uniformly white, eye-stabbing brilliance of the sky and the plain. I did not have much time to look around, though, what with the bustling and teeming, the cries, tiny incidents, and sorting-out going on all around me. We would now, I heard, have to separate from the women for a short while, for after all we could not bathe together with them under the same roof; however, there were motor vehicles waiting a bit farther away for the elderly, the weak, mothers with infants, and those who had been exhausted by the journey. We were given to understand all this by a new set of prisoners, though I noticed that out here there were now German soldiers, in green forage caps and with green collars on their tunics, who were keeping an eye on everything and making eloquent hand gestures to indicate directions; I was even a bit relieved to see them, since they struck me as smart and trim, the sole anchors of solidity and calm in the whole tumult. I immediately heard, and moreover agreed with, the exhortation from many of the adults among us that we should try to do our bit by cutting questions and good-byes short, within reason, so as not to give the Germans the impression of such a rabble. As to what followed, it would be hard to recount: I was caught up and swept along by a damply seething, swirling tide. A woman’s voice behind me kept on squawking about a certain “small bag” that she was letting someone know had stayed with her. An old, disheveled-looking woman kept getting in the way in front of me, and I heard a short young man explaining: “Do what you’re told, Mama, we’ll be meeting up again before long anyway. Nicht wahr, Herr Offizier?”[3] turning, with a knowing and, in a way, somewhat grown-up conspiratorial smile toward the German soldier who happened to be giving orders right there, “wir werden uns bald wieder…” But my attention was already being taken up by a hideous squealing from a grubby, curly-haired little boy, dressed up a bit like a shopwindow dummy, as he tried with peculiar jerks and wriggles to free himself from the grasp of a blonde woman, evidently his mother. “I want to go with Daddy! I want to go with Daddy!” he screamed, bellowed, and howled, stamping and drumming his feet, incongruously shod as they were in white shoes, on the white gravel and white dust. In the meantime I was also attempting to keep up with the boys, following the intermittent calls and signals that “Rosie” was giving, while a stout matron in a sleeveless, floral-patterned summer dress forged a path through everybody, myself included, in the direction where they had pointed out the vehicles were. After that, a tiny old man with a black hat and black necktie bobbed, twisted, and jostled around for a while, looking anxiously this way and that and shouting out, “Nellie! Nellie!” Then a tall, sharp-featured man and a woman with long, black hair clung to one another, faces, lips, their entire bodies locked together, causing everyone a flash of irritation, until the ceaseless buffetings of the human tide finally detached the woman, or rather girl, carrying her away and swallowing her up, though even as she receded I saw her a few times more, struggling to remain in view and waving a sweeping farewell from where she was.