The Flight
It seems the only option open for me now before the border guards reach me is a quick leap from the back of the train. But I realize the train is traveling much too fast for me to jump. At this speed, I would be lucky to survive my fall, let alone escape. Is this the end of my daring escape to freedom, cornered here by the military police at the end of a speeding train? Is this where my dream will end of returning home to my mother and to the life that the Germans stole from me? Is this to be the lonely and pitiful end of Anatol Dmytriuk? The questions are flooding in my brain.
I stand there turning over in my mind what will happen to me once the police identify me. There seems to be no good outcome for me. I can see no way past this. All of my struggles to survive, all of my efforts to return home, all that I suffered to get to this moment, all of it will end for nothing here on this train.
“It would take a miracle for me to escape now,” I tell myself.
Suddenly I feel caged in and hopeless. The Nazis will claim one more Ukrainian victim to add to their millions. My whole life, as short as it is, will become merely one more number in the body count of the diabolical, Nazi nightmare. Dazed by that

conclusion, I stand lifeless as I stare at the railroad ties rushing away from me. They are taking with them all of my dreams and all of my hopes as they disappear into the landscape.
“It’s over, Anatol. It’s finally over,” I tell myself.
Then something gradually focuses my attention. I begin to notice that the railroad ties seem to be slowing in their rush to my destruction. Is it my sense of time slowing down for me until it comes to full stop? Is that what the end is like? Does it all just slow down until we reach dead stop? The thought of my death seeps into me and clouds my brain. At that moment I feel like an animal before the slaughter. Slowly I shake off my morbidity and begin focusing on my situation again. Then I realize something is changing. Is the train slowing down? How can that be? What does it mean? Then I hear the announcement that our train is breaking because of a signal ahead. While I watch the train slow down, my mind sharpens and my hope is reborn.
“Today,” I tell myself, “Anatol will not die.”
I begin calculating in my mind when I will be able to jump from the train. Will the train slow down enough before the police notice me? Will I be able to jump from the train unnoticed? It seems like a very long time before the train finally slows enough for me to make my escape. Probably it is not nearly as long as it seems at that moment. While I wait without knowing what will happen next, the

enemy keeps moving closer to me. Watching the border police check the passengers’ papers, as they move step-by-step closer to me, makes it seem as though the train is not slowing down but rather racing hell-bent to my destruction.
Then the moment finally arrives. The train slows enough that it is easy for me to make my second leap to freedom. First, it was the leap from the second story window at the clinic, and now a second leap from the back of a slow moving train. I take a deep breath and jump. Once I am safely off the train, I hunch down beneath the level of the windows and race as quickly as I can from the end of the train to the front car of the train. Once there, I again board the train and quietly take a seat among the other passengers, whose papers have already been checked.
They are startled and puzzled by my sudden boarding of the train. In hushed tones, I explain that I lack papers. No one betrays me to the German police. These fellow passengers are all victims of the Nazis just like me. There are no Germans on this train, because they travel on their own preferred trains. All of us on this train are bound together in a conspiracy of silence. The train does not stop completely Then it begins accelerating slowly and then moves faster and faster towards the border and toward my homeland. Once again, I am racing toward freedom. Beyond that border lie my homeland, my hometown, and my dear mother. Beyond that border, lie my life and my whole future

as I can imagine it.
Narration: Ukraine consists largely of fertile steppes, some mountains, lowland marshes, and forests. The two major river systems, the Dnieper and Dniester, drain the land. The Dnieper River divides the republic into Right Bank and Left Bank Ukraine. Anatol was born in Eastern Ukraine on the Right Bank in a small town called Novomoskovs’k. It is situated about 10 miles up the Samara River, which flows into the Dnieper River. With its large fertile plain (steppe) and its rich soil, Ukraine has long been recognized as the “bread basket” of Europe. Early in the Twenty-first Century, it will become the third largest grain exporter in the world.
Finally, I cross the border. Now I am back in Ukrainian controlled territory in Ukrainian Galicia. I did it! I can breathe more easily. It feels good to be back in my world. A big load has just been lifted from me. Now, I really feel that I am free. I know I am not completely out of danger, but it feels a lot less dangerous for me here in my homeland. Almost two long, lonely, painful, starving, and exhausting years have passed since the Germans abducted me and hauled me off to Leipzig, Germany when I was only 16 years old. A lot has happened to me in those two years, things that I know will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.