Another night to get through somehow, sitting bolt upright in a car thick with tobacco smoke and smelling of stale food and soldiers' boots.
Once we stopped for an hour out in the fields. Marie and I opened our window and stuck our heads out of doors to breathe the cool air. Extra cars had been put on during the day, and we could see the long curve of the train behind us, with the red squares of the lighted windows. There was a movement of troops, and soldiers occupied every inch of space. We could hear them singing soldier songs in parts, with pronounced rhythm and unutterably sad cadences. Some one played their accompaniment on a balalaika. Back and forth under our train window a woman paced restlessly. Never shall I forget the soldiers' singing to the balalaika, and the woman with her white face in the darkness, and the millions of stars so very far away.
The second morning, about eight, we pulled into Kiev. Our train was so long that we had some distance to walk before reaching the station. As we approached, I saw a crowd of people being driven into baggage cars. I was so tired and confused by the journey that I didn't distinguish who they were at first. When I got close to them, I saw that they were thin-faced Jews in clothes too big for them. The men looked about them with quick, furtive movements, a bewildered, frightened look in their dark eyes. The women held their shawls over their faces, and pressed against their skirts were little children. A stale, dirty smell came from them all. I overcame my disgust and looked more closely. How white the faces were, with purple sockets for the eyes, and dried, cracked lips! No one seemed to have any personality. One pallid face was like another under the stamp of suffering. Gendarmes with whips kept them on the move, and struck the leader when there was any mix-up that halted the procession for a moment. The Jews seemed to shrink into themselves under the lash, sinking their heads between their thin, narrow shoulders, then pressed forward again with frantic haste.
I heard the clanking of iron, and into a separate baggage car I noticed the gendarmes were driving a group linked together with heavy iron chains. I was horrified! I had the persistent impression of passing through an experience already known—"Where have I seen this before?" went over and over in my mind, and I felt a dread that seemed the forewarning of some personal danger to myself. I was so very near such terrible and hopeless suffering. What kept me from stepping into that stream of whip-driven, helpless people?
"Who are they?" I asked Marie.
"They are Galician Jews whom the Government is transporting into Siberia."
"But why?"
"Because the Russians don't trust Jews. Whole villages and towns in Galicia are emptied and taken to Siberia by étapes—part of the way by marches, part in baggage cars."
"In this heat?" I exclaimed. "But hundreds must die!"
"Not hundreds—thousands," Marie replied.