through the hole. Having squeezed in its head, the child looks around and meets the eyes of the awaiting soldiers.
The child twists and wrestles wanting to go back, but the mother pushes him by the legs to the other side, to the other side—to get food.
Trams without numbers, but with the Star of David.25 Signs saying Nur für Juden.26
Hackneys have disappeared from Warsaw and have been replaced not by the car or the motorcycle, but by European coolies. By rickshaws. By bicycle carts.
A line of rickshaws on the street. One after another, they lightly roll down the smooth street. Red. Green. Blue. They move, roll on, [25] flash by. Ladies wearing hats. Men wearing high boots. They glide by. Fast. The whirr of a car sounds behind them. There can be only one car—a German car.
A crash. A bang. A scream. A crowd. The car drives away. Just a few wheels, boards, and some rubber from the shredded tires remain in the street. The coolie has already been taken to a hospital. For zoologically a coolie is a human, too.
A truck pulls up in front of a tenement. The flats and the furniture have already been examined. Young airmen accompanied by Volksdeutschs supervise the “requisition” or, simply speaking, outright robbery. A nicely furnished, modern flat. Low, glass cabinets. A hand-crafted metal lamp. Sofas. Everything shines. A bookcase. The flat of the young married couple looks like straight out of a furniture store window.
Four bare walls stripped of all the paintings and spotted with dark, random rectangles where the furniture used to be. The ceiling seems even whiter now, in contrast with the muddy, scarred [26] floor. And the terrifying, empty, monotonous boredom and sadness.
The busiest street of the ghetto. An old, narrow alley. Narrow sidewalks. An elongated shape covered in newspaper and pressed down with stones is lying on the sidewalk.
