All God's Children by Anna Schmidt

lying on the ground.
    “You there,” he ordered. The boy recognized him but showed no relief at Josef’s presence. His eyes were wide with pure terror. “Come down from there at once. And you,” he added, pointing to the father, who was trying to calm the wailing baby.
    Josef grimaced as the guard roughly grabbed the boy’s thin arm and swung him to the ground next to Anja as if he were no more than a sack of potatoes. “Stand back,” Josef ordered and was relieved to see the guard obey. “Get up,” he ordered Anja. “Schnell.” He made a motion as if to strike her, and she scrambled unsteadily to her feet. The boy immediately clutched at her coat as the man climbed down from the cattle car and stood helplessly by.
    “Kommen Sie!
” Josef barked out the command. Fortunately the chaotic scene around them—dogs barking, children wailing, people begging for mercy, and guards shouting out orders—gave Josef the cover he needed to get Anja and her family safely away, but when Anja and her husband hesitated to follow his order, the guard raised his rifle.
    “Nein!” Josef shouted as he stepped between the guard and them.
    Anja started to cough, and Josef wondered if her hacking was the result of being too long in the cold or a ploy to help him rescue them. But when she looked up at him, he saw only fear in her eyes. She did not trust him even though he had moved to protect her from the soldier’s bullet. She thought of him as no different from the others. Her cough was real.
    “Gehen Sie, los,”
he ordered and pointed toward the other end of the train—the long line of cattle cars with doors slamming shut like the prison cells that they were.
    With her shoulders hunched as if to ward off any further blows, Anja took her son’s hand as her husband sheltered his daughter with his arms and upper body. She gave Josef a sideways glance as they started to trudge back down the platform toward the station. Everything in their posture told Josef that at any moment they expected to be shot or perhaps simply thrown with their children beneath the train that was now moving slowly away.
    He locked his hands behind his back in the manner that he had seen his father do on numerous occasions and moved closer so that he was not quite walking with her but was near enough for her to hear him. “Just keep walking,” he said quietly. “If anyone approaches, say nothing. Let me handle it.”
    Anja’s head bobbed once, and she glanced at her husband and nodded again. Josef hoped that was her sign that she had heard him and wasn’t about to do something foolish. He wouldn’t be able to stop the guards along the platform from shooting the entire family if they tried to run. “Do not try to escape,” he added loudly for the benefit of the guard and also as a special warning to the husband, who refused to look at him.
    Anja placed her free hand in her husband’s and held onto him. The train moved past them, the cries of its cargo echoing down the track as it gathered speed.
    Then there was silence. The soldiers hurried back to their trucks and left, taking their dogs with them. Momentarily the platform was deserted.
    They walked past two soldiers armed with rifles who apparently were assigned to patrol the area. Farther on, two burly men waiting at the entrance to the station were watching them. The men wore the garb common to the Gestapo, their hands jammed into the pockets of their trench coats. Their felt fedoras pulled low over their foreheads. Their shoulders hunched against the bitter wind.
    “Mama, you have blood,” the boy said, pointing up at Anja.
    Sure enough, as they neared the station entrance Josef saw that Anja was bleeding around her mouth where the guard had struck her. “Cough,” he hissed. “Cough into this like you are sick.” He thrust a handkerchief into her hand.
    Anja followed his orders to the letter, going so far as to double over and gasp for air between hacking coughs.
    “Doktor?” One of the