I can’t stop myself wanting to believe him. A tiny flame of optimism glimmers like a flickering candle in the dark. Can I let myself believe he is telling the truth? Are they really looking after us at last? Do they finally see how unfair everyone is to the Jews and they are giving us a chance to live our lives in peace? Maybe there will be a park we can walk in! We’ll be able to go to school, ride bicycles, maybe even sleep in our own beds instead of sharing a dirty mattress between four of us.

Can I dare to let myself dream even for a few minutes?

I know I shouldn’t, but the guard’s words are so reassuring I can’t stop myself. Now I just want to get moving, but people are still clambering aboard the train.

Our carriage is full, and still more and more people pile inside. So many people that soon we can barely move.

A feeling of panic swirls in my stomach.

And then the doors finally close and the last bit of air is shut out. We are sealed in. I think back to science class – although it feels like a lifetime ago that I had lessons, that I went to school. I remember learning about oxygen. We need it to breathe, to live. How much do we need? Is there enough in here? All these people breathing. In and out. In and out. Using up the oxygen. What happens to us after it’s gone?

I realize my mind is racing so fast that the thoughts no longer make sense.

‘Mutti,’ I croak. I haven’t got enough room to twist my body, so I can’t look for her.

‘I’m here, darling,’ she whispers from behind me.

‘I’m here, too,’ Vati says from somewhere else.

‘And me,’ Otto’s voice adds from even further away.

All around me, people are doing the same. We are like animals in the wild, bleating and crying to find our families. Bleating and crying to those we love, calling out names as we stand here waiting, waiting, waiting.

And then there is a sudden jerk. As one, we fall. Bodies moving against bodies, rolling forward, then back again.

Slowly, the train clanks into movement. We settle into a jagged rhythm, swaying together, gripping arms of people we cannot even see, pressing feet and knees against people we hardly know.

As we rock and sway and breathe each other’s breath in and out, sharing the air as if it were a prize in a game of pass the parcel, I find myself noticing how easy it is for something absurd to become almost natural.

How rapidly something unthinkable can become commonplace. How easily we let the inconceivable become a new normal. How quickly we learn to stop questioning these things.