Upfall

Mueller was on the floor just past the door. As Yatom stepped through he almost tripped on the German. Nir, following, turned the other way to cover the rest of the car". Mueller pointed his pistol at Yatom. Too close to fire his Tavor, Yatom kicked the pistol aside with his right leg, and then slammed the butt of the Tavor into the German's head. Mueller dropped the pistol and Yatom delivered another head blow, this time a kick with his left leg, as if he were driving a soccer ball. Nir shuffled past Yatom into the car, followed by Shapira. Yatom delivered a third blow with his foot to the German.

Mueller collapsed unconscious. Yatom shoved Mueller with his foot to make sure German was out, and then picked up the pistol. "Clear right!" yelled Nir. "Clear left!" echoed Shapira.

Yatom looked over at Shapira with disbelief; then down at the prostrate figure of Mueller, resplendent in his Nazi Polizei uniform.

"I'm having a hard time believing this."

"It's not easy" agreed Shapira. Mueller lay flat on his back, blood and spittle dripping from his mouth. They both gave a typical Israeli shrug. Yatom still held Mueller's pistol in his right hand.

"Can I see that?" asked Shapira. Yatom passed him the the pistol.

Shapira examined the Walther P-38. He pulled out the magazine and cleared the chamber, then removed a round from the magazine and examined it, noting the Nazi factory markings by the primer. Shapira.

"Do you mind?" he asked Yatom, as he slipped the weapon into the cargo pocket of his pants. "Be my guest."

In the boxcar near the end of the train Jezek wedged his fingers into a small opening between two planks on the floor and tore at the wood. His hands were full of splinters and slick with blood. He'd sweated much precious fluid in the awful heat of the car, and felt faint.

In over a day he'd had nothing to eat or drink, and yet he labored on, driven by adrenaline and desperation. Outside the car he heard the hammer of machineguns. Was he struggling to escape into his own firing squad?

Tovi, the shoemaker's son working near Jezek was eighteen years old but looked two or three years younger. The boy, familiar with his father's tools and had wrinkled out a plank from the bottom of the boxcar was hard at work on another. Jezek and a different youth were tugging at an adjacent plank, which was slowly yielding. Jezek grunted and felt the wood crack. Jezek and the other boy pried away the second plank. An opening perhaps fifteen centimeters wide appeared in the floor leading to the rail-bed. Jezek caught a whiff of fresh air scented with pine and rusted iron.

Tovi stuck a foot through the opening, then another and began to squeeze his body through the broken floor, while Jezek and the other youth tried to pry up a third panel. Tovi's father saw his son disappearing and called on him to stop. Tovi ignored the old man and contorted his thin frame through the fissure.

”Ich bin raus! "he yelled back up to the car as he hit the railbed.

Jezek called for a man standing nearby to help him, and together with the second youth they ripped out the third panel from the floor. The gap was just big enough Jezek to fit through. He looked across to car to for wife and daughter. Through the mass of wretched people he caught the eye of Ilse.

"I'll come back!" he called. Ilse seemed to reach for him, but he thrust his legs into the hole and dropped through to the ground. Jezek knew he was placing himself in great danger, yet felt a surge of wonderful relief to be out of the stinking railcar. He breathed in the air, and adjusted his eyes—though he was in the shade of the great train it was still much brighter beneath the car than within it.

Tovi was still there, lying on his belly upon the track bed. Jezek crawled over to him. "What do you see, boy?"

"I saw boots—soldiers boots—running toward the front of the train."

"German?"

"I don't think so."

Jezek crawled forward as he had learned in the army. He reached the edge of the car and peered out. It was hard to see far flat on his belly. As he looked down the train he saw that several other Jews, having clawed their way out were doing the same thing. The shooting had stopped but it was impossible to hear anything else above the din of thousands of trapped people still inside the cars. Suddenly, one of the Jews hiding under the train, a few cars up from him, slithered out and made a dash for it across an open field for the trees. Jezek grimaced, expecting to hear rifle shots, but they did not come. Another Jew, obviously noting the same thing, took off.