The seven-year-old awoke with a start; his senses were suddenly alert to the strange noise. It shook the frightened boy loose from his deep slumber.
He looked around in the dimness of the room; the cuckoo clock chimed a few times and he knew it was three o’clock in the morning. His little sister in the next bed stirred restlessly. Very quietly he slipped into his slippers and gingerly walked across the floor to the window.
Moving the curtain open, his eyes glued to the glass pane, he stared into the darkness. The noise was coming closer. There, straight ahead, he thought he saw the blinking lights. He was now fully awake. Abba had said that they’d be coming.
Quietly, so as not to wake his sister, he opened the door and disappeared down the hall to his parents’ room; both were awake and peering out of their own bedroom window.
“Abba, they are coming! I saw the lights.” The father bent down and picked the boy up in his arms.
“Yes, my son, they are coming. I can see the shadows of many soldiers on six or seven military trucks. Soon they will reach us and…” He fell silent and the mother left the room to attend to the little girl, now awake and crying.
In this vast, sparsely populated area, noises carried farther and seemed louder; the gears kept shifting as the trucks continued their climb up the slope toward the few houses on the hill. They were still a few kilometers away, but steadily the caravan on the horizon approached the target. The orders had been signed.
The father began to speak. “Pay close attention, my son; they’ll be here soon and I want to make sure you’ll never forget. Jewish history is packed with expulsion after expulsion — the forced evacuation of Jews from their homes and lands. It began with the Ten Tribes, continued in the days of the churban habayit and once again when the second Temple was destroyed.
“The Babylonians drove us out and the Romans were next; hardly did we catch our breath when we were expelled once again. The list is long, my son: Spain and England, Portugal, Sweden, Poland, Italy and Bohemia. There were so many I doubt any country can be spared.”
The little boy shivered and moved closer; the sounds of the trucks and marching feet were distinctly audible now.
“And usually they came at night, my son, to wake us and frighten us into submission. We never fought — we couldn’t. So we would leave everything behind and move on, dogs barking at our feet and soldiers with bayonets at the ready. The long lines of forlorn, beaten men, desperate women and wailing children were a common sight; we were jeered and laughed at and urged to make haste.
“And then came the Nazis. Their expulsions encompassed much of the civilized world. Their solution envisioned no more evictions. Theirs was to be the last expulsion of Jews, ever. Had they succeeded, perhaps you and I would not have been here today to witness once again the expulsion and evacuation of Jews.
“We are the remnants that survived that unimaginable march. We came here so that never again would we be expelled from our homes. Or so we thought.”
The little girl, her head slumped on the mother’s shoulders, slept peacefully now, oblivious to the growing noise. The boy’s eyes were glued to his father’s moving lips, his mouth wide open as if swallowing every word.
The father continued. “All those expulsions and forced evacuations combined didn’t hurt as much as what is about to transpire.”
“Are the Nazis coming back?” the frightened child blurted out.
“No, my son,” the father replied as his hand gently caressed the boy’s cheek. “We must be stronger than ever, my son, because this time the pain is worse than all combined. Because, my son, this time they are our own.”
The boy nodded. He seemed to understand. Just then, the noise of the many engines suddenly died, as their headlights lit up the room. A strong knock, the door was opened, and three soldiers stood framed in the doorway.
The child’s eyes moved from the soldiers to his father, to his mother and back again. “We are ready to go,” the father announced.
Silently they made their way toward the door. The soldiers moved aside. As the little boy left the house, he glanced back at the soldiers. What he saw made him stop and stare. He was baffled, confused. He looked up at his father.
“Why, Abba, are the soldiers crying?”
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