“Get on the train, Jew!” I must have blanked out. I was standing in front of a long, dark, snow-covered train with a German Official screaming his lungs up at me. The vein on his forehead looked as if it was about to explode.
“Get on the train, Jew!” I felt paralysed. All of this was such a shock to me. Where did this train come from? Where is it going? How did I get here? The last thing I remembered is when I was woken up so abruptly. Everything that happened between then and now was just blank in my mind. It was a big time gap.
“Get on the train, Jew!”
That’s when my leg was kicked out from under me. I collapsed and my head dug into the jagged rocks under the snow on the ground. I was already cold, now I was shivering like a madman. All I would like is just a few minutes to collect myself and figure out what all this is.
“Are you stupid? Get on the train, damn you!”
That’s when he reached down and pulled me up. His strong grip on me made me realize just how weak I was. I wiped the snow from my face and moustache. I haven’t eaten since that one night they came for me. I couldn’t quite remember how long it has been since then, exactly. All I knew is that it had been some time.
I was thrown up into the train car. It was nearly full of people. Some of them were as young as infants. Some of them were as old as seniors. All of them looked to be treated with the same malicious intent. They looked liked used up punching bags whose purpose was to entertain a violent, bloodthirsty oppressor.
It was too tight to be remotely bearable, let alone comfortable. More and more people were being pushed in the car and I was already pressed against people to my left and right. It was the dead of winter and darker than black itself. Besides the visible chilled breath, I could barely see the people’s faces. I could definitely smell the people though.
Finally, the door was shut. It shook the train quite some bit. I was just about used to the darkness and I began to notice people. I saw their frightened faces. At least half of them had tears running down from their eyes.
I stood there for some time while the train started. I decided to stand by the window because the weeping children were too depressing. At least I could try and drown them out by looking at some country scenery. But even that was depressing still because there was barbed wire all across the window. It still didn’t help the fact that innocent babies were freezing and starving to death.
Hours went by, or at least I think they were hours, and all of the landscape looked the same. It started to make me feel a little sick. I realized that it was time for a bowel movement. I tried to restrain but it wouldn’t subside. All that was on the train for a toilet substitute was a metal bucket which was already half full of faeces and urine. I sat down on the rim and the cold shot all through my body. I was really embarrassed as the flatulence echoed across the train car. I could see people covering their mouths and coughing because of the stench. I thought I was going to be sick with the flu, or something like it. I tried to lie down on the floor to rest but the freezing wood on my backside, along with the haunting memory of the night I was taken away, was horribly unsettling.
I was sleeping one night with my pregnant wife and I awoke to a gun shoved in my face. It was a German officer with a bunch of soldiers. He said that we had to go with them or else he would kill us. While I was trying to reason with him, my wife tried to flee. They shot her and my unborn child and dragged me into a truck waiting outside my house. That was the last thing I remember since first getting on the train.
Somehow, I must have fallen asleep. I was awoken when I felt a shift in the car. The train stopped! I was also freezing more than I have ever before. The door was swung open and a gust of wind and snow came blowing in. A man came in and took the bucket away and another handed us all apples. We were ecstatic. But I couldn’t eat my apple because I felt too sick. I didn’t think I would live all the way to where we were going to, wherever it was. I gave my apple away to a young girl and she was very thankful.
The bucket was cleaned and returned and the door was slammed shut once again. We were off again to where we were going. No body knew where we were going. Some of the people told stories. They scared everyone in the car. They were stories about camps where Jews were worked and starved to death. We all wouldn’t believe them.
It got terribly cold and icicles grew on the outside of the train. I grew very weak, skinny, and pale. I couldn’t even move anymore. I kept passing out and waking up god knows how long after. Each time I would think of my wife. I would think of what my child could have become if he or she was conceived. I would frequently throw up on myself. There was nothing in my stomach so I was dry heaving all the time. Sometimes I would wake up to hear mothers crying hysterically because their children had died. I would hear sons and daughters cry because their parents had frozen to death. I could feel ice growing in my moustache and eyebrows. Every time I would wake up, I could feel my clothes becoming more hard and stiff. More snow and ice accumulated on me. I was too weak to even wipe it off. I watched myself slowly die and I couldn’t do anything about it. Finally, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up again. The cold winter got to me.