Some Austrian Kindness

We woke up Friday morning to the sound of the boxcar doors opening, our clothes crumpled from being on our bodies for two weeks now. Spiritually anguished, we dragged ourselves out and discovered that we had arrived in Austria. Many dead bodies were soon spread out in front of the open boxcars. The Austrian policemen took over this "human cargo". To their credit, they acted much more humanely than the Hungarian policemen did. No bawling or beating us.

I looked around and discovered a nearby road where civilians - free people - occasionally rode through. Together with my thirteen-year-old sister Jolan I walked to the roadside, where Jolan begged passersby for bread. We hardly got there when a young bicycling girl stopped and gave us her own sandwich roll with butter and yellow cheese, which we divided among the five of us. This anonymous Austrian girl's kind gesture satisfied our starved stomach, and made our souls feel good.

Armed gendarmes instructed us to line up in rows of five. We put down our backpacks in the bare field that was our "home" for now and breathed some fresh air. We walked around the area, turning over every little bit of garbage we found in the hope of finding some food. I found some moldy, greenish bread, broke it up into five pieces and shared with my family. Each of us received less than one bite, so we just swallowed it bitterly.

© David Muskal, 2001