From Sand and Ash(93)

“It’s going to break! I can feel it!” he yelled, triumphant. With a mighty yank he bore down and the bar came free at the top. He grabbed the severed end and hung from it, bending the bar back, creating an opening about a foot wide and a foot tall. He was a very thin man, but he was going to have a difficult time getting through.

“They shoot at the first jumpers,” Eva heard the man telling the boy who’d helped him all day and all night long. “So I will go first.”

“You can’t do this! I am responsible for everyone in this wagon.” The protester was a heavier-set man with a bolero perched on his head. “If you jump, I will be punished. We will be punished.” The man spread his arm to include everyone else, and a woman spoke up from behind him.

“You will die! Someone jumped when we were being shipped to San Dalmazzo. His clothes caught as he was jumping, and he was pulled under. We saw the blood and the strip of fabric hanging from the window when we got off the train.”

“We are going to Bergen-Belsen! There is no need to take this risk,” another man argued.

Armand could only shake his head in disgust.

“Bergen-Belsen is a labor camp,” Armand argued. “Hard labor! And we have done nothing wrong. You act as if being sent to a work camp is our due.”

The voices of protest rose again, urging him to think of others.

“No! I am jumping. I would rather die now than die slowly,” he shouted. He scrabbled up the side of the car once more, and Eva watched with all the others as he squirmed and wiggled through the small window, trying to get his shoulders to fit. He had just managed to clear his upper body when the sound of shooting commenced. People screamed, and Armand’s legs jerked wildly and then went limp. He hung, still wedged in the hole he’d worked so hard to create.

Another man pulled him down. A portion of Armand’s head was missing, and the rest was covered in blood, obscuring his face entirely. He was dead. One woman began to weep, but most of the passengers lapsed into silence, careful not to look at the man who had risked it all and died for his efforts.

“Where are they shooting from?” Eva spoke up quietly. “The Germans. Where are they? We are on a moving train. I don’t understand.”

As much as they would like their prisoners to believe it, the Germans were not all powerful. They did not look down from on high, from the heavens, plucking lives from the earth like God. Instead of scaring her, the shooting made her angry.

“They have a lookout, a guard, and a roving spotlight on each end of the train, in the engine and in the caboose. Wait until the light passes over and then push yourself out. Feetfirst. Not headfirst.” The woman named Gabriele spoke up.

“So if you can wiggle through the opening quickly enough, you have a better chance?” Eva hoped she was asking the question correctly. She garbled some of her words and put a vowel on the end of everything—she was italiana, after all, but they seemed to understand.

Gabriele nodded. She was holding her son’s hand and they were conferring quietly. The boy didn’t want to jump anymore. He was understandably afraid that he or his mother would be picked off by the German watch.

“Climb down the side and make your way to the couplings between cars, where you won’t be as easily seen. It will also give you the opportunity to turn around and jump outward. Cover your head and roll when you hit the ground. Then stay down. Stay flat. Don’t start running until the train has passed, and then wait a bit so the man on the caboose doesn’t see you and shoot,” Gabriele told her son.

“How do you know this?” Eva asked.

Gabriele shook her head. “I don’t. It is just what makes sense to me. I’ve thought about it nonstop since the first train.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“We’re in Switzerland, I think. But we may have already crossed into Germany. We need to jump soon. Otherwise, we will be deep into Germany. The deeper, the worse off we’ll be.”

“I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. It is too risky,” Pierre cried.

“Where will you go?” Eva interrupted. The woman soothed her son and answered softly.

“We are Belgian. We are going to try to get back home. The Germans are pulling back. We think we will be safe if we can just get home. We fled to France when Hitler invaded.”

“What happened?”

“The Italian army left—they were actually the reason we stayed safe so long—and the Germans moved into the sector the Italians had once controlled. People were rounded up. My husband was detained and deported. Pierre and I stayed hidden for five more months. But in February, we were discovered. We were put on a train for the transit camp, and we’ve been waiting there ever since for a group large enough to transport.”

“Please, Maman. We don’t have to do this. We are strong. We will be all right in a camp,” Pierre pleaded with his mother.

“No, Pierre. It is our only chance to go home,” Gabriele said firmly, holding his gaze. “You have to jump, and you will jump, just like we planned. And you will get to Belgium. You will live, Pierre.”

He nodded, but his eyes filled with tears that spilled down his cheeks. He embraced his mother fiercely, and she kissed his cheeks and held him for a brief moment before pushing him toward the window.

He climbed up obediently. No one protested this time. No one tried to make him feel guilty or responsible. They just watched morosely.