How could these civilians be expected to endure
such hardships? They are townspeople, most of them having lived indoors
all their lives, like you or me."

"Like you or me." No, no. It was unbelievable. I could not put myself in
their place. I could not imagine such insecurity--that lives could be
broken in the middle in this way.

"How useless it all seems!" I said.

"Useless. You think so?" Mme. C---- took me up. "Do you realize that
whole Galician towns have been moved into Siberia this summer? Part of
the way on foot, part in baggage cars, where they stifled to death in
the heat and for lack of water and food. One carload wasn't listed, or
was forgotten by some careless official, and when it was finally opened
it was a carload of rotting flesh. The bodies were thrown into the river
by the frightened official, but a soldier reported him and he was
court-martialed. One crowd of several thousand was taken to Siberia.
They reached Tomsk. Then the Government changed. What was the need to
transport these Galician Jews? the new Minister argued: a useless
expense to the Government: a waste of money and time. Let them go back
to their homes. So the Jews were taken back over the same route, many
more dying on the return journey, in the jails, and camps, and baggage
cars, or by the roadsides. They found themselves once more back in their
pillaged towns, with nothing to work with, and yet with their livelihood
to be earned somehow. They began to dig and plant and take up the
routine of their lives again. They began to look on themselves as human
again. The grind of suffering and hopelessness began to let up and they
had moments of hope. And then the reactionaries came into power with
their systematic oppression of the Jews. Back to Siberia with them! This
in midsummer heat. I saw them as they passed through Kiev for the third
time, a few weeks ago. Never shall I forget them as I saw them last. The
mark of the beast was on them. You couldn't call them living or
suffering or martyrs any more. They were beyond the point where they
prayed to die."

The gendarme had finished his list. The tension relaxed. Some of the
Jews settled back into their former apathy; others gathered in excited
groups, pulling their beards and scratching their heads; still others
walked up and down the paths, restless, like so many caged animals.

A man and a woman with two children approached the gendarme
deprecatingly. The man asked a question, indic