The Children’s Train

In the city, the townspeople quickly identified him, with his ragged clothes and thinness, as one of the people from the ghetto. They were not used to seeing the prisoners walking around town as if on holiday, so they stared as he walked by, stunned by his brazen escape and casual saunter through town.

A big man suddenly reached out and grabbed Noah’s small shoulder. “What are you doing here? Are you a Jew boy? Did you escape the fences? I’ll turn you in and be a hero, so the Nazis will leave us alone.”

The man’s fingers dug painfully into his shoulder, and Noah bit them.

“Ow! You little vicious animal!” the man yelled. He released his grasp, and Noah tore away. The big man thundered after him.

Noah wove in and out of the crowd, finally losing the bulky man. Free of his pursuer, Noah rounded the corner and ran right into Dirk and Adler, the once-ridiculing and now completely furious policemen.

“You are stupid,” Adler said, grabbing Noah by the back of the neck. He was escorted roughly back into the ghetto by the two guards, whose uniforms still showed the spray of Noah’s dirt bomb.

When they passed through the gate, they pushed him to the ground.

“Try that escape trick again, and you’ll be shot on sight,” Adler said.

“You’re barely even worth the bullet,” Dirk said.

Noah knew he would have to find another way out.