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farmer helped some citizens salvage belongings that had not been completely destroyed. Just as he was leaving the city, the entire load, the wagon and horses, was thrown into the air.
    “It just tore them into shreds,” my mother recalled with a shiver.
    We continued walking aimlessly. Was this the same Friedhof, or court of peace, I had so often visited? Although I was too young when my brother died to remember his funeral, I made weekly visits to his grave for years. He died at the age of nine from a leak in his intestines. Led by my mother’s hand, I carried flowers from the fields and meadows we passed on the way to trim his resting place. I remembered the many funeral processions I witnessed, the mourners all dressed in black, and the women’s faces enveloped in veils to hide their tears. At a calculated pace they followed the coffin carried by somber-looking men clad in dark suits and hats. A small group of brass musicians led them toward the burial site.
    But what I witnessed now bore no resemblance to my memories. The graveyard was swarming with people. Many of them were digging holes. Not big holes, just something deep enough to hold whatever was used in place of a casket. A water bucket, deformed and rusty, stood near the edge of a freshly dug hole. A wrinkled newspaper was tightly wrapped around its contents. A man bent over to collect some of the wilted flowers strewn about, and with loving care he arranged them on top of the bucket. Then he slowly lowered the bucket into the ground. He whispered words of prayer as he returned the earth to the hole. He picked up the grave marker beside him; with his pocketknife he made one last adjustment on its newly inscribed words before he sunk it into the ground.
    “Hier ruht in Frieden—unser Sohn Thomas,” it read in white, painted letters. Underneath were the freshly carved words, “und seine Mutter, Maria.”
    A woman passed us. The cart she pulled held an oval-shaped laundry tub. A lifeless limb protruded from beneath shreds of scorched burlap.
    “Can we help you?” my father asked in sympathy. She did not answer. Apathetically she raised her hands to decline his offer and quietly continued her journey.
    A young soldier pushed his bicycle up the road. A cardboard box balanced on the frame of his bike. Carefully, so as not to drop his load, he steadied the box with one hand while he steered the bike with his other hand. As if he could read our thoughts, he stopped to say, “It’s my baby!” He nodded toward the box.
    “I am sorry,” my mother said.
    “I haven’t found my wife yet,” he said.
    Not knowing what else to say, we stood and stared at the box. Slowly, the soldier continued up the road. “My baby! My baby!” he wept. I fought back tears, but like acid they burned my eyes and face. Won’t they ever stop? I remembered my grandmother saying, “If you run out of tears, you have run out of faith!”
    A steady line of trucks rumbled toward the cemetery. Just outside the gate was a narrow, wooded park. Men with shovels clustered around a huge hole in the ground.
    Piled up in the hole were hundreds of bodies. A truck backed up to the edge. The hydraulic lift was set into motion, and another load plunged into the hole. The truck moved away, and the workers mechanically swung shovels filled with a white compound, a disinfectant, until a layer formed over the bodies. A layer of dirt followed.
    The next truck in line rolled up. With jerky movements the bin rose to empty itself. When the truck finished dropping bodies into the hole, one body remained. Caught on a metal hinge, it hung in midair. A worker poked at it with his shovel, but it would not come loose. Another man walked up to it. He dropped his shovel, and together the two men pulled on the corpse. The driver shifted gears to pull away from the hole. One of the men shouted for more gas. The driver stepped on the accelerator. The body fell at their feet. Lifting it by its arms and legs, they swung