Chapter 27 Section 27

I recovered very quickly over the next few days, and they put a fishy poultice on my wounds, which seemed to do the trick. I later learned that Ilo was among the few who survived the train derailment and the Holocaust, and that good news helped my recovery.Golda was not among our group of survivors, and I can only guess that she either died at the gunpoint of the Nazis or died on the way. Haim, and my mother, whether they lived or died, I don't know.I don't even know if they are on the same train even though the destination is the same.Of course, little Yiluo is still in the dark about the possible fate of his parents.And now it was my duty to look after her and Nikolai.

If I understood what this responsibility meant at the time, I would probably have flinched.But during my recovery, Nicola and Ilo have regained the friendship they had formed, and now no one can separate the two children.And with each other's company, they won't be thinking about the whereabouts of their parents all the time, and my guilty assurance that they will be reunited with their parents soon seems to satisfy them. Inevitably, then, when our rescuer announced his departure, I found myself the sole guardian of Nikolai and Ilo.The main reason is that among all the survivors, only three of us have Romanian citizenship.The rest were Bulgarians, Hungarian Magyars, and other Slavic peoples, all of Jewish origin.Except for these few survivors, countless passengers on that train either died on the way or were massacred by the Nazis after the train overturned.

During my recuperation and recovery, I had a pleasant time, and those rescuers took good care of us under limited conditions. My injuries were relatively minor compared to some, but there were other survivors, such as Nikolai and Ilo, who escaped the Nazis because they were buried under other people's bodies when the car overturned. Miraculously, he survived unscathed.Even so, the fact that I know that hundreds...maybe thousands died en route or at gunpoint is depressing.I also heard that after rescuing all survivors from the wreckage, resistance soldiers decided to cremate the countless dead along with them.They brought fuel from the previously seized Nazi transport vehicles, set the train and the pile of corpses on fire, and turned it into a blazing hell.

This information was given to me by Kylo in the few conversations that followed.When I was able to speak, I found out the approximate direction of Krakow. I began to plan for Nikolay and myself to find out what happened to my mother.But then there's Ilo, and now I know we have to take her.Cairo tried to convince me that returning to Romania was the best option, but I refused to accept this suggestion, and finally he had to compromise, and told me all the information he didn't know. I am not optimistic about the future.I am taking my two young children to Krakow, hundreds of kilometers away, deeper into Poland than I am now.And my shoulder was injured, and I couldn't hold them. The two children could only walk by themselves.

We had no money to buy food or accommodation, and only the clothes on our bodies were left. Although they were cleaned, they were worn out along the way.In addition, we can't understand or speak the words here, and it is difficult to ask for help and directions. But apart from Kai Luo, no one else objected. In fact, they themselves did not want to bear the burden of three children. So our rescuers bid us farewell, left their blessings, and disappeared into the forest to continue their mission against the Nazis.And I took Nicholas and Ilo with me, and tremblingly started the long journey towards the north to find our beloved relatives.