Echoes Page 0,96

miles behind them, that there had been several thousand people on the train.

Amadea was standing next to two women and a young man. They looked at each other and said nothing. And as they walked, Amadea prayed. All she could think of was that her mother and sister had done this. And if they could do it, so could she. She thought of the crucified Christ and her sisters in the convent, and didn't allow herself to think of what was going to happen to her and the people around her. They were still alive, and when they got to wherever they were going, they would have to deal with whatever fate waited for them there. She said silent prayers, as she had for days, that there had been no reprisal against Gérard and Véronique. There was no evidence that they had concealed her, so she hoped that all was well with them. They seemed a lifetime from here, and were.

“Give me that!” a young soldier said to a man just behind her, and yanked a gold watch off his arm that had been overlooked in Cologne. She and the man next to her exchanged a glance and then looked away.

Amadea was still wearing Véronique's riding boots and was grateful to have decent shoes as they walked for the next hour. Some of the women had lost their shoes on the train, and were forced to walk on bleeding, torn feet, on frozen ground. They cried out in pain.

“You're lucky!” one of the guards said to an old woman who could hardly walk ten minutes after they had started. “You're going to a model city,” he said smugly. “It's more than you deserve.” As she stumbled, Amadea saw the men on either side of the woman hold her up and support her as she thanked them, and for the next mile or two, Amadea prayed for her. She was praying for all of them, including herself.

It was nearly an hour later when they saw it. It was an ancient fortress that had been built by the Austrians two hundred years before. A fading sign said TEREZIN in Czech, and beneath it a new one in German read THERESIENSTADT. It was in effect a walled city, they were marched through the main gates, and told to line up for “processing,” as they watched people milling around in the narrow cobbled streets. It was more of a ghetto than a prison, and people seemed to be roaming around free. There were endless lines of people standing, holding tin cups and eating utensils. And beyond them a building that said COFFEE HOUSE, which seemed singularly odd to her. There was construction everywhere, men hammering and sawing, and putting up structures. Amadea noticed quickly that people weren't wearing prison uniforms, but their own clothes. It was a model prison camp of sorts, where the Jews living there were left to survive and fend for themselves. There were two hundred two-storied houses, and fourteen huge stone barracks. It had been built to accommodate three thousand, and there were more than seventy thousand people living there. For the most part, they looked hungry, tired, and cold, and none of them seemed to be wearing warm clothes. Half a mile away, there was another smaller fortress, which was used as a prison for those who created trouble here.

It took seven hours for Amadea to be “processed,” and all they were given while they waited was a cup of thin gruel. She hadn't eaten in five days. There had been water and bread on the train, but she had given her bread to the children, and the water made everyone sick, so eventually she didn't touch that either. But she had dysentery anyway.

The people she saw walking through the streets of Theresienstadt were an odd mixture. There were large numbers of old people who, she learned later, had been told that Theresienstadt was a retirement village for Jews, and had even been shown brochures so they would volunteer to come there, and beyond that there were crews of haggard-looking younger people who were part of construction groups working on putting the place together. There were even a considerable number of children. It looked more like a ghetto than a work camp, and because of its construction as a fortress and a walled city, it had the feeling of a village. But the people living there, other than the soldiers and guards watching them, looked ragged. They had the