For a while we were able to hide at our neighbour’s. There were floorboards in her larder that we could take up and crawl underneath. They came every day, looking for meat, clothes and women. We lay there silently as they crashed about the house above us in their winter boots. I held Lotte inside my coat and felt her warm breath on my belly.

I don’t understand why they took our neighbour. She was just an old woman. Perhaps she did something stupid; perhaps they came in the dark and somebody made a mistake. Anyway, one day she was gone and they found us. But we were lucky. We were put in a group of women, children and old men. Everyone was given armbands, and we all walked to the train station together. My little girl waved when the train pulled in. I could see through a hatch as we set off. The platform was bathed in sunlight. A few men laughed and shouted something at me as the train began to move. A woman’s brown shoe lay on the platform edge.

We spent the first part of the journey in the goods wagon. It was so cramped that we had to take turns sitting down, but somehow we managed. Shortly before the border the train stopped and we continued on foot. When we had crossed the border, we tore off the armbands and set light to them. Many people were laughing as if they’d gone mad. One woman threw her armband on the ground and jumped and danced on it. I sat down on a rock and exhaled. My life after that, my whole life after that brief moment on the rock at the border, was one long exhalation.

We joined the trek. We slept under carts, in barns, in open fields. The nights were cold and we often went hungry. When we got the chance, we took onions and potatoes from the fields. We knew we were thieves, but we felt no remorse.

There were camphor injections against typhus, but camphor makes people mad; I knew that, and stopped. In a delirious fever, I saw a horse. It was standing calmly on the horizon, carrying the red sun on its back. Black angels sat in the trees by the roadside.

I’d always known how strong Lotte was. She was only six, but she could walk like a big girl. Her legs were brown and smooth under the dust from the road. We walked side by side, holding hands. One day we’ll get there. That’s what I told her. We’ll arrive and then we’ll rest. Right now, we have to keep walking. On and on, towards the west, one step at a time, between the hordes of others in front of us and behind, their numbers dwindling every day. One day we’ll get there and we’ll rest.

It took longer than we were told. It seemed there wasn’t much room in the country, and we were sent here, there and everywhere. Eventually we arrived in Paulstadt. Supposedly we had a relative here, but I never found him. Perhaps I’d just imagined it.