"Only few people can stand it on this God-forsaken stage of misery. Occasionally a few thin Jews in their long coats walk across the ruins of the market place, which look like a stage setting. On their shoulders they carry in a bundle their few belongings, like pictures of the Wandering Jew. Their families live for a short time from whatever they can scratch together from the ruins or out of the trampled-down fields. They cook and bake on one of the stoves standing everywhere right out in the open road and offer their poor wares for exhibition and sale on a few boards, a last effort to support life by trade. In the case of the women, no matter what the nationality, it always seems as if they had saved out of the horrible destruction only their best and brightest clothes. At a distance their colors shine and smile as if nothing at all had happened. But upon coming up closer, one can easily see how little these unfortunate beings carry on their poor backs. "More than once we stand perplexed before the touching picture of a short rest on the 'flight to Egypt.' A little family--is it the only one that has remained behind when everybody else wandered away, or have they already come back home because there was nothing better to be found out in the world? In the garden of a plundered farmhouse they have put up a poor imitation of a stable out of charred boards, and in it they live more poorly than the poorest gypsies. Their lean cow has been tied to a bush; among the trampled-down vegetables their equally lean mule grazes. The mother squats on the ground, nursing a child, while father and son are stirring up a heap of glowing ashes and roasting a handful of potatoes that they have dug up somewhere. "The return pilgrimage of the natives has already begun at an extensive rate. The advancing Germans are met everywhere by long lines of them, on foot and in wagons, carrying with them carefully and lovingly the few remnants of their herds. What has been their experience?