Still more people are being shoved in. We are packed in so tightly I don’t even know if I am standing or merely being held upright by the crush of bodies. And still the guards push more people inside. I crane my neck to see. There is nowhere for them to go – can’t they see that?

People are being trampled as others squeeze on top of them. People are bent double to fill every single available space. Human beings packed into every tiny inch of a cattle truck.

This cannot be happening.

I face the wall and pray for them to stop shoving more people in.

And then, at last, they do. I hear the door slam shut, a bolt slide across, and we are finally full.

There is no space that is not filled with people. Not one bit. I don’t know how many hundreds of us are in here, but however many it is, surely there are too many to share the miniscule amount of oxygen in here.

We wait in silence. There is not enough air to speak. Finding a speck of it to breathe is all we can manage to do for now. If we are lucky.

And then a clank, a jolt, a shudder, and we are moving.

The trucks move so slowly, grinding along the tracks through a world that has abandoned us. I try to imagine what it looks like out there, beyond this dark, putrid carriage.

I imagine forests and fields. Green grass, red leaves, white snow falling on branches. I fancy I hear the snap of a twig as a squirrel scampers up a tree.

My thoughts are dreams. That world is not real any more. It doesn’t exist. For us, anyway. All that exists for us is this darkness, the sound of people moaning, the last gasps as another person gives up the fight. The stench of sweat from the rest of us, the barely living.

And still we trundle on. I am lucky. There is a tiny gap between the wooden panels in front of my face. If I position my head just right, I can find a pinprick of air. It feels like a goldmine.

On and on and on we go.

After hours and hours, the clanking and the grinding come to a stop. Are we there?

Where is ‘there’, anyway?

The door is opened and guards are outside. ‘Throw out any dead!’ one of them shouts.

He reminds me of the men who used to come down the road with their carts in Vienna, shouting out for scrap metal and odds and ends that people no longer needed.

That is now us.

Bodies are passed between people and out through the door. The Nazis throw them on the ground, and then, as abruptly as they opened, the doors are shut and bolted again.

Even with everything that I have been through, I cannot believe what I have just witnessed.