Four Perfect Pebbles

Content Warning: The section of the guide contains discussions of discrimination, graphic violence, and death.

The Blumenthals walked four miles to the train platform and were loaded on to the trains with thousands of others. People began to wonder why the Germans were trying to kill them when they had lost the war, and they guessed that it was an effort to conceal their atrocities. For an entire day, they waited in and around the trains for more prisoners to board, and when the train finally left, it only traveled 15 miles before stopping to unload any passengers who had died along the way. SS guards would shout “Toten raus!” (Out with the dead) into the trains, and the people aboard the train would have to carry the bodies out to the tracks and bury them. The train stopped constantly, with people dying of Typhus, dysentery, and starvation, among other conditions and diseases. This is what gave the train the name, “The Death Train.” Marion’s leg wound remained infected, and the train was often attacked by allied forces as it made its way to Berlin. Food ran out, but when the train stopped to unload the dead, people dug for vegetables in the ground.