“Up! Out! Everyone!”
Oscar awoke with a start. Soldiers were tramping through the barn, ordering everyone outside. He staggered to his feet and looked over to his mother, sitting on the edge of her bed. Paul began to scamper for the doorway.
“Paul, wait for me,” Oscar ordered. “Anyu, here, take my hand.” He helped his mother up and held her arm.
“Move! Outside!” the soldier barked.
“Paul, take Anyu’s other hand.”
“I can walk.” His mother said, moving forward.
“Oscar, is Anyu all right?” Paul looked from his mother to his brother.
“She’s very tired.”
Paul didn’t think his mother was just tired. Every day she became weaker and weaker and it frightened him. They walked outside and joined the line of prisoners. Paul shivered. The sun had not yet risen and the air was cold. A light snow had fallen. It was late November, but they were still wearing the lightweight clothing they’d had on in April. His mother’s thin cotton dress was no protection from the frigid air. And he was in shorts.
The officer in charge stood before them. “Guten morgen.”
Everyone came to attention as the soldiers began the daily head count. No one dared move; they barely breathed. Oscar remembered the soldier who whipped the woman in Szolnok and the guard who threw the coughing woman into the mud. He had seen soldiers lose their tempers for the slightest reasons.
Sometimes these lineups lasted for hours, but this day the roll call was quick. The guard checked off everyone’s name and then turned to address them.
“The harvest is over. Today you are being moved.”
Oscar felt, rather than heard, the moan that swept through the line. This was the moment they all feared. The farm was safe. Wherever they went next might not be this good. The farmers treated them kindly. There was food and beds.
The crunch of tires broke into his thoughts. Two big trucks rolled to a stop. Fear clouded the air like a wet fog.
At that moment, the farmer and his wife appeared. Each carried a large box. Is she crying? The woman, whose name he still didn’t know, set the box down in front of him. The farmers were Austrian, not German. They weren’t Nazis. They had been kind to the prisoners. They, too, feared the Nazi soldiers, who ordered them around and talked to them as harshly as they did to the prisoners.
The woman stood in front of Oscar. She wore a coat of green wool and a matching hat with a feather. Her expression was somber, but her eyes were kind. “Molasses, from the sugar beets,” she said in German and handed him a glass bottle. She looked into his eyes. “Good luck,” she whispered. Then she and her husband moved down the row and handed each person a bottle of the syrup.
When all the bottles had been distributed, the soldiers waved the prisoners onto the trucks. Oscar sat on the floor, between Paul and their mother. As the truck left the farm, Oscar saw the farmer and his wife looking after them. Then the truck turned a corner and they were gone.