His mother, too, because she lost her husband from a bullet, because Milinko is all she has, and because he is so good, has a presentiment of doom and tries to mobilize her contacts, not highly placed but numerous, to find her son a position that will shelter him from immediate danger. But just as the brother-in-law of one of her old customers, a Partisan commander, Veselin Djurašković, moves in with her and promises to find Milinko employment in a military warehouse not far from town, Milinko enlists as a volunteer for the front. When he tells his mother what he has done and hears, among her lamentations, of the opportunity now missed, he feels drained of blood, seeing this as a sign that his fate has been decided. He will take nothing with him, not a change of underwear, not even a book to read, for he is certain that he is descending, despite his high principles, into an abyss of savagery and blood.
19
They kept us in the synagogue three days, from the twenty-fifth to the twenty-eighth of April. On the fourth day, at dawn, they woke us, ordered us to gather our belongings for a journey, but not to make noise, because the town was still asleep. We hurriedly collected our bags and tied them securely, then filed out into the street, where the guards formed us into ranks and marched us down the middle of the road to the station. It was still dark. Those who wept were told to be quiet, those who could not control themselves were silenced with rifle butts. Outside the station, on a siding, was a long line of freight cars with doors open and guards all around. They ordered us to get in. The cars quickly filled, but the guards forced more and more people to climb in, hitting them with their rifles. Finally, when we were all in, they shut and bolted the doors. In the darkness there was shouting, confusion. Some called for help because they were injured, some cried out for air, children screamed as their mothers tried to hush them. On each side of the car was a small window strung with barbed wire, and everyone pressed to get near them. Those who could not stand any longer sat on their luggage, but that encroached on the space of others, so there were quarrels. We seated our grandmother on our bags, and my father and I stayed next to her. Gradually people grew quiet from sheer weariness. Outside, it was getting light. When would we leave? Where would we go? No one knew. We listened to the voices of the guards outside, and the people standing by the windows reported on what they could see. Hours passed. Suddenly the train jerked into motion, and some began to weep again. Whenever the train stopped, those standing by the windows read out loud the names of the stations. We were moving north. Sometime in the afternoon we by-passed Subotica and stopped in an open field. The guards were shouting, banging, and our door opened with a crash. Out! We grabbed our bags and stumbled out, glad to be in the fresh air, filled with the hope that perhaps this was the end of our ordeal. In the front of the train the guards formed us into a column, led us across the rails to a road, and in about half an hour we reached an empty mill, in which we were shut up. Inside the mill were several thousand people from Subotica and the surrounding area. There was not enough room for them, and now we climbed over them with our baggage, trying to make space for ourselves. There was almost nowhere to sit or lie down. The floor was concrete. We had brought two blankets with us and now spread one of them for my grandmother, covered her with the other, and huddled close to her, my father and I, sitting in our coats. The people from Subotica told us we wouldn’t be staying there, we were all going on to Germany. At night the children — there were hundreds in our room — took turns crying, and those who had to go to the bathroom trampled over the rest of us. There was only one toilet, two taps. Wherever you went, you had to get permission and be escorted by guards, and for everything you waited in line. So we saw the dawn arrive. In the morning, we were given boiled chicory, and during the day we ate what we had brought with us, which was soon consumed. We spent two weeks in that place. One morning, they told us to pack our bags and formed us into ranks. We waited until the afternoon, the stronger among us standing, the older and weaker sitting or lying on the ground, without water, because no one was allowed to leave the ranks. Finally they took us to the train. Once again, the loading, the crush in the car, the heading north. The train passed Baja, and again we stopped in an open field. When the door opened, the sky was dark, though it was still daytime. The wind hurled dust, the clouds rolled above us, cold and heavy. The guards, agitated, ordered the old people and children to one side, ordered us to put our bags down. People rushed to one another, said their good-byes, redistributed their packages, shared comforting lies. The guards, angry, struck with their rifle butts indiscriminately. Finally we started, and as the storm neared and the wind turned icy, we were harried along at a trot. When the camp came in sight — a barbed-wire fence in front of two large wooden barracks — it began to pour. Prodded and cursed, we rushed through the camp entrance and straight for the closer barrack. It had an earth floor that hadn’t been watered down, so our feet raised a thick cloud of dust that made us choke and cough. Somebody screamed that it was a gas chamber, and for a moment we all believed that. More people pushed in behind us, soaking wet, raising new waves of dust, until the barrack was packed with people coughing. Outside, it continued to pour. The roof began to leak, and water fell on us, so we took off our coats to cover our heads, but the water came down in streams and soon covered the earth floor, covered our shoes. We spent the night standing in mud. In the morning, they herded us out of the barrack, and we were not allowed to go back until evening. The old people and children they drove out of the other barrack; we saw them staggering, heard them weeping, but were not allowed to go near them. We sat on the ground and tried to figure out what was going to happen. After the storm it became hot. There was no shade, no grass, and the blankets we could have used to shelter ourselves had been taken away when we left the train. We gathered odd pieces of wood, stuck them in the ground, spread our coats over them like tents. We were hungry, thirsty. The guards brought soup in huge cauldrons but we had no cups or plates, they were in the bags that had been taken away from us. We went back and forth, begging, borrowing, the guards relaxing the harsh discipline somewhat. In the early evening, I sneaked across to the other barrack to look for my grandmother, but couldn’t find her in the crowd. I returned quickly for fear I would be found out and punished. They herded us back into the barrack, into the mud, and ordered each of us to occupy a sleeping space of forty-five centimeters. People measured with their feet, with their hands, but there was not enough room. Then the guards rushed in and ordered us to lie down as we were, and they said that anyone who made a noise or moved would be killed. We squatted through the night. The next day, they again drove us outside. Again I managed to get across to the other barrack without being seen. Pushing my way through a mob of people, I saw my grandmother sitting half-conscious, her arms around a concrete pillar. She must have clutched it before sliding to the ground. I begged for some water, obtained a few drops with great difficulty, sprinkled her face, got her on her feet, and smuggled her across to our group. Somehow we managed to hide my grandmother, keeping her with us for all the ten days we were at Baja. She listened to us, suffered patiently, almost as if unaware, and only occasionally moved her lips in prayer. But my father found the disorder, the hunger and thirst unbearable, and particularly the crowding in the evening, when quarrels broke out in the barrack and the guards, with blows, made us huddle in a heap. He became irritable, cursed our neighbors, then would hold his head in his hands in remorse. During our last night in the barrack, I woke up and heard him weeping, but said nothing, thinking it better for him to be alone with his trouble. In the morning, when the command to move was given and we rose and lined up, my father spread his coat on the ground and lay down on his back with his eyes closed. I ran over to him in a panic and begged him to stand up. Not opening his eyes, he told me to leave him. He couldn’t go on, he said, couldn’t take it. The soldiers noticed us, pushed me back. I joined my grandmother, who did not know what was happening, and the column continued on its way, walking around my father. Leading my grandmother by the hand, I looked back and saw guards gathered around my father, who still lay on the ground. I heard two shots, and then we were outside the camp. We were marched back to the railroad track, where a train was waiting. The day was hot, the cars like an oven from standing in the sun, the windows no longer strung with wire but boarded up. Our car was filled, but the guards kept loading in more people, until we were packed solid. The doors were shut. We thought we would all be suffocated, that this was indeed the end we had all feared from the guards’ threats and the whispers of our prophets of doom. Sweat poured from us. The children, again with us, cried for water. Feeling along the bottom of the car, someone came across buckets of lukewarm water. There was fighting, pushing, shouting. One of the women suggested that the children be given sleeping pills, which some had brought along. Each child was given half a tablet, and finally they grew quiet. The train did not move until the evening. It traveled all that night and the following day, and not once were the doors opened. Again the children cried, and the old people fell from exhaustion, making the already cramped space more cramped. There was some air in the car while the train moved, but people needed to relieve themselves. One of the buckets, which we had emptied, was used for that purpose. The car stank. Someone covered the bucket with a coat, but people were going to it all the time, until it became too full and excrement flooded the floor. We had no more water. Hardly any food. All I had left in my pocket were a few lumps of sugar and one small piece of bacon. My grandmother and I took turns chewing it, saying nothing. On the evening of the second day, the train stopped. The car door was opened, but our attempts to jump out were met by Hungarian policemen’s threats and bayonets. An officer told us that we had reached the frontier and would now be handed over to the Germans. “Up to now you’ve had it good, you dirty Yids, but that’s all over. So anyone who has anything of value, gold, rings, bracelets, anything you’ve hidden, cough it up. If the Germans find that someone’s held on to the smallest trinket, they’ll kill the whole carload without mercy.” He hurried off down the length of the train. There was urgent whispering. Although our bags were taken from us at Baja, we all had managed to hide a small thing of value, in case there was the possibility later of buying something with it. Some people thought it was dangerous to hand over anything, because that would be proof of our deception, but others said it was dangerous not to obey the order. Finally, we collected several articles of gold in an old man’s hat and gave that to the police. They seized the hat and, right there in front of the car, before our eyes, distributed the gold among them, then pulled the door shut on us. After perhaps an hour, the door scraped open again. Now German soldiers stood in front of our car with flashlights fastened to their chests. Two or three of us cried out in German, begging for water and to be allowed out of the car to go to the bathroom. “Shut your mouths!” was their answer. One of them announced that we would be searched, and if even one of us was found to have anything of value, everyone in the car would be shot. It was our last chance, he said, to surrender what we had hidden. Someone dared to reply that we had given all our remaining possessions to the Hungarians. At this, the Germans swore, but did not let up in their demands: “Collect what you have, scum, or we’ll search you one by one, and then you’re done for.” Again, reluctantly, several gold objects fell into a handkerchief, and I gave up the ring I had sewn into the hem of my grandmother’s dress. The door was shut; the train moved on. From weariness and hunger, our legs gave way, and we would have collapsed if we had not been held upright by other bodies pressed against us. The old and the sick fainted, raved, prayed, and the children whimpered with fatigue. We guessed that we had passed through Austria, though it no longer mattered. We would have exchanged our state for any other. On the third day, we stopped. The door of the car was opened, and we heard shouts of “Los! Los!” Outside, the daylight was blinding, the air sharp as we poured out of the car and, pushing or carrying the weak, fell on the ground. Dogs barked, German shepherds on leashes held by healthy young pink-faced German soldiers, and we, like refuse, crawled at their feet, gasping for air and rest. But we were ordered to stand up. “Los! Los!” And the men had to go to the left, the women and children to the right. There were farewells, weeping, my grandmother and I made our way with the women to the right. They pushed us forward, I held my grandmother around the waist, because she could hardly move her legs, until we reached a tall officer who was separating the women left and right with a thin stick. He lowered the stick between me and my grandmother, she slipped off to the side, to the ground. I bent to help her, but the officer’s stick pushed me to the other side, and the guards herded other women after me. That’s how I left my grandmother. I didn’t have time to look back, and I never saw her again. We were arranged into ranks of five, and I found myself with four strange women. Marching along a path lined with soldiers and dogs, we came to a high barbed-wire fence; behind it were hundreds of people the like of which I had never seen in my life — emaciated, gray, with huge, bulging eyes and hairless heads. Waving rags in their shrunken hands. “Madmen!” someone whispered, and for a moment we believed that. The guards opened the gate, and we entered among those apparitions, who now made incomprehensible signs or pointed with their thin, dirty fingers to their mouths. We passed them, and passed prisoners using the brief time they had after washing themselves to dry whatever clothing they had washed, too, surreptitiously, by walking back and forth, which we would do ourselves the following day. Then we were in front of a large brick building. Two well-dressed women in German military caps came out and ordered us to strip for a bath. We left our clothes in separate little piles and waited, naked, holding our shoes in our hands, until we were let into the building. After showers, which sprinkled us with only a few drops of lukewarm water, the German women pushed us into the next place, where we were received by men in striped prison clothes, watched over by a soldier. They shaved our heads and bodies, sprayed a stinging liquid between our legs, and pushed us on to the next place, where we were given clothing from a heap — oversized, bedraggled, torn, so that for a moment we looked like a band of revelers. They quickly lined us up and marched us to a barrack. There were three rows of double bunks, no blankets, only bare boards. We had to lie down five to a bed and could hardly move. In the evening, they took us out for roll call, counted us, recorded us, but gave us nothing to eat. We complained of hunger, but the trusty of our barrack, a young Slovak woman, told us that we would get no food tomorrow either, we were not on the provisions list until the day after. We lay down on our cramped beds, our stomachs aching, delirious from the desire for food. In the morning, we were awakened at two-thirty — it was to be the same every day — and given half an hour to relieve ourselves and wash, but since there were only two latrin