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completely, so people were forced to defecate or urinate where they stood, soiling their clothes.
    Without food, fresh air or water, the sweating, despairing humans were crushed against one another. Those who could see through narrow cracks in the wood called out the names of the towns they passed as they continued on their three-hundred-kilometre journey northeast. By the time they crossed the Polish border, some of the eldest prisoners recited the Jewish prayer for the dead and then simply shut down. Those who died were hurled off at stops along the way, making a little more room for the living. Like thousands of Jews transported from Sered’ in abominable conditions during the final months of 1944, these 1,860 Slovak Jews realised that they were headed somewhere they would almost certainly be treated most harshly and might well meet their deaths.
    Priska and Tibor were as fearful as everyone else, but still they kept trying to reassure each other that all would be well and they’d return home with their child. Priska especially was determined not to give up, because ‘I liked my life so much.’ She reminded Tibor that her ability to speak a number of languages would allow her to converse with the other prisoners and even the SS, who might treat her with a little more respect. She had a brain and she knew how to use it, she assured him.
    Priska’s faith was always important to her and she relied on it during those dark hours as their locomotive pulled them ever eastwards. ‘Belief in God is the most important thing in the world. When someone has faith they must be a decent person and know how to behave. Every night I greet my God before I fall asleep.’ Having been christened as an evangelical, she rarely thought of herself as Jewish, an irony that wasn’t wasted on her as she and Tibor were treated without a shred of compassion on account of their faith. ‘It is terrible what they did to the Jews,’ she admitted. ‘Horrible. Like animals. Men are men, and a man to a man has to act properly. They treated the Jews terribly. We were stuck in a freight train and … then thrown out of there. They behaved appallingly.’
    The train journey lasted more than twenty-four hours as those squashed on board continued to wonder where they were heading and whether they’d be reunited with the loved ones taken from them two years earlier. Would Priska see her sister Boežka and her parents again? Might she be reunited with friends from Zlaté Moravce with whom she’d swum, sung and spoken English and German? Would Tibor be able to comfort his widowed mother at last?
    An increasingly distressed Tibor didn’t believe so and could hardly bear to see his wife suffer. Retching and without any water or fresh air, she struggled for breath in the dark, fetid wagon as he held her to him, kissed her hair and tried to console her. Hardly stopping to catch his own breath he spoke to her constantly,reminding her to think positively no matter what, and to focus only on joyful things. Just as in his letters he had spoken of her ‘light piercing the dark clouds’, so he tried to keep her hopeful for the future.
    As the train trundled remorselessly on, though, his courage began to fail him. If this was how they were being treated now, then what further cruelty awaited them at their destination? Holding Priska closer still, he openly prayed that she and his yearned-for baby would at least survive. Realising that this could be their last chance, the couple decided to choose a name for their child in that unlikeliest of places. Whispering, they picked Hanka (more formally Hana) for a girl – after her grandmother’s sister – and Miško (Michael) for a boy.
    Standing next to the young couple in the dimly lit wagon was Edita Kelamanová, a thirty-three-year-old Hungarian spinster from Bratislava. She couldn’t help but overhear their conversation and she was moved. Over the growling of the train, Edita told Tibor, ‘I promise that if your