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           My legs stopped working as soon as the banging and shouting started and I didn’t know why. I was lying on my belly in the mud with my eyes closed as I listened to the sounds of clonking shoes going past. I knew if I got up and they saw that I was still moving that it would be bad. So I stayed in the wet mud and waited. The screams that had been really loud before were going away and I’d have to go soon because I needed to get back to Mum and Dad. They’d be really angry if I turned up late, and I was already going to get a talking to from Dad because I’d dropped our lump of bread. Ora was going to laugh when I came back all dirty, then she’d tell Mum and I’d be in big trouble.

            All around me people were lying on the ground, waiting for the clonking and the bursting sounds to go away. The man nearest me had his eyes open and he was looking at me. I wanted to tell him to pretend to be dead but I knew what it looked like now when someone wasn’t pretending anymore. I didn’t know whether to move. Before we went to the ghetto, when we hid under the floorboards of our house, dad would tell us when it was okay to move and we would all breathe out together in a big whoosh of air. But now no one could tell me if it was safe. I heard footsteps getting louder again and a lady’s voice coming through the smoke. I lifted my head slightly to see her, she was crying and gargling and wobbling down the road. She pulled at her hair and was covered in mud. Her face was wet and shiny. She  was one of us but she was also a policewoman. There was a whistle round her neck and a badge on her coat. Mum had told me to be careful of the silly badge people because they worked for the big guards. When she saw me she stopped and sniffed and tugged at her whistle.

Holding out her arm she said, ‘You cannot stay here in the road boy, come with me.’

Without thinking I took her hand, ‘I must go back home. My parents are waiting for me. I was supposed to bring the bread back.’

I pointed at the horrible sticky brown bread that I’d dropped. She looked at me and turned her lips up.

‘Don’t worry, I know your parents. They have been taken to the Umschlagplatz with everyone else. There is bread and potatoes there for us all.’

She was pulling me towards the end of the street, but that was where the banging and shouting was coming from.

     ‘I don’t want to go that way; I want to go back to my house.’

I tried to wriggle out of her grip.

‘You don’t have a house anymore, your parents and your sister are here. All of us are here. We are going on a journey’

We jumped over the people on the ground to the end of the road and turned the corner. My legs went all wobbly again when I saw hundreds of people all sitting around waiting for something. There wasn’t any bread or any potatoes like the lady said, only muddy people moaning and crying and hugging each other. I tightened my grip on her hand, and walked into the middle.