But still the train stood, as if the thousands and thousands of people inside it were too heavy a load. At last a limousine came down Krawiecka Street and stopped near the terminal shed. It was the Daimler Double Six. Up and down the track the Others came to attention. F. X. Wohltat came out the rear door. It looked as if someone had blown him up to more than his normal size. The buttons on his shirt had popped open. His jacket had split its seams. Even his face, his wrists, his neck, like a frog’s, were swollen. At once he went round the back of the car and opened the other door. Out stepped—how many lives had he? More than a cat!—I. C. Trumpelman. His cape was gone, and so was his hat and his cane. The old spectacles still hung on his nose.

Through cracks in the boards of the stockcars, through peepholes, the Jews saw the Elder. They recognized his mane of hair. A cry went up. A tremendous wailing.

“South!”

“We’re going south!”

Wohltat, sweating, excited, pulled his revolver out. He beat the butt on the side of a cattle car. But the lament passed from wagon to wagon. “Save us!”

The Elder walked forward, briskly, without assistance, to the first sealed car. The guards, the Totenkopfers, saluted. “Messiah! Messiah!” cried the trapped Ghettoites. But they quickly fell silent when the Others slid back the door. Wohltat leaned into the unlit hole.

“You see, there is everything. A big coffee urn. Lots of black coffee. And pails for a latrine.”

The men and women shrank back inside. Trumpelman glanced in, then turned to the next car. This time the Volksdeutscher actually hopped inside. There were too many Jews there to see the kettle. Wohltat pushed them backward. He beat them down. “The coffee,” he said. “There, the latrine.”

And so went the inspection. The Daimler followed along, shining its spotlight into each opened car. Trumpelman did not say a word, not even when people called him or when he saw someone—an Elite Guardsman, a big rabbi, black-haired Nellie Brilliantstein—he knew. All he did was peek inside, for an instant, then turn his back to wait for the man in charge.

This took more and more time. Wohltat liked to wade into the wagons, so that people tripped before him. He walked on them. He crushed them against the walls. “Coffee!” he screamed. “Latrine pails!” Then he would stagger from the car, like a drunken person. By the time they reached the wagon that held the Jewish Council his clothes were stained and torn. For some reason he ran into the crowd of ex-musicians, ex-waiters. He charged them with his head down like a bull. The Judenrat members shrieked in terror. Nomberg, of Religious Affairs, thrust his hands outside.

“Help us! There are ladies in the car! People’s wives!”

But Wohltat, the wild man, would not leave the wagon. He plunged deeper inside, trampling on the men and women.