Chapter 45 Section forty-fifth

Below me were rows of Polish workers, clearing luggage that had just been scavenged from the crowd. They emptied all the boxes, bags, and bags one by one, dumped their contents on rows of tables and sorted and sorted them, regardless of whose belongings they were all mixed up. It all seemed chaotic at first, with luggage being emptied and items thrown into baskets and crates, but the longer I watched, the more I felt there was a certain order to the seemingly frenzied scene.Yes, those items are clearly classified by value.Jewelry, chandeliers and fine china were carefully set aside under the watchful eye of the SS.Laundry is handled separately, with coats and jackets in one basket, shoes in another and so on.

All these private belongings, which not so long ago belonged to hundreds of Jewish families, are now being sorted and sorted in complete disregard of the wishes of their owners. I looked at boxes and boxes of photos: family photos, photos of grandparents, pictures of children, all thrown into a big unlabeled crate, pile after pile, confusion and horror in my head Intertwined, I suddenly realized that these monuments will be burned, I can't explain why, but I just know. It's a strong harbinger of everything to come. I crouched down in awe, and at this point, I was utterly terrified of what the children might suffer.

When I returned to the children, Yiluo grabbed my arm and said worriedly, "Anka, your face is so pale. What's wrong with you? Is there something wrong?" Trying to stay calm, I pushed the situation out of my mind and told myself I was wrong.The Jewish luggage was still in the station hall, and it was not the same luggage that I had just witnessed being looted. I hugged Yilo and Nicholas tightly, and said, "Let's go, little ones, I found the platform where we are waiting. It's just opposite here, and the train will arrive soon." I added Said: "Remember, boys, you can only speak Polish when someone is around. Come on, we have to hurry up."

I led them silently across the station to the appropriate platform, where I waited anxiously for the train to arrive.The children were also quiet, and it was easier not to speak than to communicate with each other in unfamiliar Polish. I was too depressed by what I had just seen to be in the mood for jokes, so their silence suited me. The train finally pulled into the station noisily, dragged its long snake-like body, and stopped in front of us with a piercing, trembling scream.I'm glad I'm looking at a train of passenger cars instead of a cattle truck. We stood aside and watched the passengers disembark one after another, then chose a car with few people, and settled ourselves in a far corner.The bulletin board in the car, although only in Polish and German, provided us with useful information, and I understood that the journey would not be too long.By now, Isabella and Wojciech have eaten all the food that Isabella and Wojciech prepared for us, and I know that the two children will be hungry again soon.

The other passengers in the car were some distance away from us, and under the cover of the rumbling noise of the engine, we could converse in whispers in our native tongue.And whenever Yi Luo asked me what frightened me at the station, I always deliberately avoided it and turned the topic to something pleasant. Ilo seemed to quickly forget about it, and I, though I couldn't forget it, at least temporarily put it behind me and played childish word games with the children until Nikolay started yawning and soon fell asleep. I fell asleep with my legs whistling.I dragged his feet onto the chair to make him sleep more comfortably, and then Yiluo also lay down, talked to me occasionally, and gradually fell asleep.

Time passed quickly, at least, we passed one platform after another, and the train briefly stopped and left, it seemed to me that it was all the same thing.I counted the number of stations between the departure point and Krakow in advance, and every time I stopped at the station, I counted silently, and I knew that we were not far from the destination. I was about to wake the children up to get off the bus when a voice yelled, "Tickets! Passports! All ready for inspection!" That's when I watched in embarrassment as a Polish guard, accompanied by a Gestapo, strode down the carriage, poring over the papers of fellow passengers.

I panicked immediately, because we didn't have any documents, and I didn't have the confidence to continue to conceal our identities. All I could do was the simplest answers I had practiced beforehand. I looked around, eager to find some inspiration, to find a way out of this crisis, and finally realized that our only hope was to bluff and get away with it.If it was just the guard I could probably handle it, because all he cared about was the ticket and we were prepared for that, Wojciech had already taken care of it for us. But if he found out that we were not Polish, he would have demanded our passports, and the SS officer would have been involved.I know very well that being a foreigner and traveling in Poland without official permission is bad enough.And in case Yilo's Jewish heritage is exposed...

The consequences were unimaginable, and I hurriedly expelled this thought from my mind.Then, all of a sudden, the guard had arrived at our seats, and the questions were coming in so quickly that I couldn't understand them. I pretended to be sleepy and asked him to repeat the question. He slowed down for me and asked again.When I showed him the ticket, he leaned forward, grabbed Ilo's legs, and yanked them from the chair. "Kid, put your dirty shoes on the floor!" he yelled angrily, and I quickly leaned over and put Nikolai's feet down too, trying not to wake him up. "Oh! You're hurting me, big bastard!" Ilo yelled in Polish, ignoring the authority of the guards and the SS officer just a few steps away.

I reflexively told her to be quiet in my native language, and when I realized what I had done, my breath stopped. The SS officer immediately appeared next to me, staring at us coldly: "You don't speak Polish, boy. Where are you from?" I knew I couldn't pretend anymore, so I could only reply: "Romania. We are Romanians." "Name?" "Anka. Anka? Pascurata." He turned to Yiluo: "What about you, little girl? Do you think you have the right to use that tone to speak to the officer? What's your name?" My heart almost stopped, and I prayed she wouldn't say her last name, because if she did say her name was Pfefferberg, all three of us would be doomed.

"Elo," she replied. I interrupted immediately: "She is my sister, Ilo Pasculata. Please forgive her rudeness. We have traveled a long way and she is exhausted." I added: "This is my Nicholas, my brother, please, sir, do not bother him as much as possible, I beg you." The SS officer glared at me and said, "I'll bother whoever I like, kid." He made a gesture to get close to Nicholas, but Yiluo immediately stood in front of him and said, "Don't touch him, he's only six years old." The officer looked taken aback, not expecting her to resist him.He stared at her, as if trying to figure out how to respond to her behavior.

"Are you traveling alone?" the guard asked. Before I could figure out how to respond, Ilo jumped ahead and said in Polish, "Who are you, idiot? Do you think three kids this young would travel alone? Our dad went to the bathroom." She Waggling your finger in front of the guard, like an adult scolding a child: "He'll be back soon, I'm going to tell him you hurt me!" I was pleasantly surprised by her quick mind and fluent Polish, and worried by her bold tone, but in the end it turned out that her brashness actually helped us. The Gestapo leaned forward until he was at eye level with Yilo, and pulled out his whip from the holster with one hand.I hold my breath. "Little friend, you are very loud. You are very arrogant. You are also very young. You will not be more than eight years old at most, I am sure." "I'm nine, not eight," Ilo declared, glaring into the other's aggressive eyes. "Are you going to keep being so arrogant?" the Gestapo asked. "I'm curious how your father taught you to be like this. You deserve to be whipped and let him teach you basic manners." Clap the whip and unfold it. "Perhaps I should let you absorb something useful from our Aryan upbringing." "If you touch me, my dad will throw you off this train!" Iloh's tone was so confident that even I almost believed her, "He knows a lot of people in Bucharest and Warsaw, Just wait and see, I'll have you sent to the Eastern Front today!" The officer's mouth opened, not knowing how to respond.At last he backed away, a small smile playing on Cruel's mouth, "You should be glad I'm in a good mood today, girl. You're blunt, and I like that about you. It's nice to see a little thing like you trying to defend yourself." Fresh. I tell you, the way those impotent Jews fawn and beg for mercy under our whips is sometimes disgusting." I put one hand on Yiluo's arm, reminding her not to be offended by any words that insult her compatriots.She glared at him, but held back her silence. The officer asked again: "Where is your father? Where did he go?" I'm so glad we didn't choose the end car this time.I pointed behind me, the opposite direction the two men had come from. "There. He'll be back soon. He's got our passports." "But you keep the tickets yourself?" The guard questioned, "Isn't that strange?" "Because you just came when he was leaving," Yiluo replied quickly, "How did he know that you still have to check your passports?" The guard seemed satisfied with the answer, but the SS officer studied her closely. "Ilo, did you say that's your name?" He chewed the name over and over again, and said, "Ilo, um...it sounds a bit Semitic, don't you think?" My heart skipped a beat.I'm afraid we've been discovered.However, Yiluo once again showed a maturity and wisdom that did not match his age. She stood up angrily and screamed at the Gestapo: "Are you calling me a dirty Jew? You big stupid pig!" She jumped on the chair and shouted across the car: "Daddy! Daddy How dare this man call me a Jew! Papa! Come on!" The guards and the SS officer suddenly fell into extreme embarrassment, and the latter raised a hand to comfort her: "It's okay, kid. I apologize. We don't need to make a big deal. I just want to make sure. .You know how crafty that jewish trash is." Yiluo sat down sullenly, and I reprimanded her pretending to be angry: "Yiluo, watch your own words and deeds, or I will tell Dad about your arrogance." The SS officer shook his head helplessly: "She is very energetic, there is no doubt about it." He turned to me and said, "Little girl, what's your father's name?" "Peter," I replied, "Peter? Bogdan? Pascurata." The officer nodded. "We've got to talk to him, I think. Let him know how badly his kids have behaved in his absence." "No, please, don't tell him," Yilo said loudly, clearly lost in his role-playing, "If you tell him that, he'll hit me. I was wrong. Please, I didn't mean to offensive." The officer smiled, almost empathetically, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that kind of warmth would come from a man in Gestapo uniform. He replied, "Very well, boy, but behave yourself from now on." He gave his palm a hard blow with the whip for emphasis. "If you say one more word, I promise you will have a hard time for the rest of the journey." Abandoning this threat, he turned and left with the guards. After they left the carriage, I hugged Yiluo into my arms, unable to conceal the joy and amazement in my heart. "Ilo, you are amazing! I can't believe how good your Polish is! And your acting... where did you learn this? You deserve to be a star on stage! Just now You threatened to drive him to the Russian front, I almost couldn't help laughing out loud." Yiluo enjoyed my compliment for a moment, but her expression soon became serious again. "Anka, why do people hate us so much? Why is it so bad to be Jewish?" I hugged her tightly and said, "I don't know, Yilo, I really don't know." Before Ilo raised more unanswerable doubts, the train began to slow down and pull into the station again. According to my count, Krakow was only one stop away. I said, "Ilo, I think we should get off at this stop. Krakow is the next stop, but we've been on the bus for a long time, and the guards might come back. To lie to them again, It's too risky." The train had just entered the station, and there were very few people getting off. In order not to let the guards see it and arouse suspicion, we waited by the gate until the last moment before getting off. It turned out to be a wise approach, and just as we got down to the platform and the train restarted, I looked back and saw the guard staring at us, then turned to find the SS officer and pointed us out. The shocked, flushed face appeared at the window, eyes blazing, and I was frozen in place as he ran across the moving carriage to find an unlocked window.I knew we'd been ripped off, and I kept praying that the train would move away, fearing the worst. But just as I watched him try to pull the window latch, the train accelerated, and in a blink of an eye half of the body had already left the platform.The window was finally opened, and the officer's angry face came out of the window. However, the train was moving at full speed, and he was yelling, but his voice was drowned in the roar of the train. A few seconds later, the train turned. Turned a corner and completely disappeared from view. For a minute or so, I stood there and stared, terrified that the train would stop abruptly, reverse, and send the Nazi back to us.But the cloud of steam continued to recede, my face returned to color, and my heartbeat gradually calmed down. Yiluo also stared, knowing how dangerous our escape was.I held her hand tightly and said, "It's all right, Yilo. We're safe now." Nikolai's little hand got into mine: "Anka, I'm hungry." In the crisis, I almost forgot about my brother.At this time, I bent down and picked him up, kissing his cheek. "Oh, little one, you reminded me, otherwise I wouldn't know what to do. Of course you're hungry. Come on, we're going to find a place to get something to eat. Then, Nikolai, I'm afraid we'll have a long walk gone." Nicholas asked softly, "Will we find Mom over there?" I really wanted to reassure him, but I couldn't bring myself to lie. "No, little one. We've got a little farther to go before we see Mama again."

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