the complete text at: https://www.reinhard-mey.de/start/tex... A thick fog descended on the large, foreign city. A long day at work lay behind me, I was exhausted and worn out. Too tired for the motorway, too late for the last flight. But I wanted to go home, and then I found out that there was another train leaving around midnight. There was still some time left, I didn't know where to go, so I stood around the station: a magnificent building from a bygone era, jostling, searching and shoving all around. I saw the travelers, the waiting and the stranded of the night, so much indifference, so much misery and suffering under so much cold splendor. I stepped out onto the open platform, the damp, cold air kept me awake. I shivered, turned up my collar and watched my breath. Three lights floated out of the darkness above the track, my train pulled in. A carriage door slammed. It was warm in the train, and I was all alone in the compartment. We drove off silently and the lights of the city sank into a milky mush. And ever faster illuminated windows and suburban stations flew past. Another level crossing, a couple of headlights and the world outside disappeared. My compartment light fell white On the gravel by the track And I sensed the dark land. And through the darkness came The monotonous sound Of wheels on the rails, A lonely song, Along the steel path. They stood at the front of the track, their skin weather-beaten. With their spades they had carved veins into the land, With pickaxes and hammers they had moved mountains And laid sleepers over gravel and rails on top of them. In bitter frost, scorching heat, in rain, day after day, At night a straw sack on the floor in the wooden shack. And up again at dawn for a miserable wage And yet another new fortune for the steel baron. And soon the steam horse was hissing through the land, sparks flying. Many a new industry and many an empire was created, Many an inestimable wealth, but every meter of track, every bridge, every tunnel was covered in tears, blood and sweat. The railway brought progress, technical revolution, to every corner, to the most remote station. It carried goods from the seaports to the edge of the Alps, connected people and cities and brought prosperity to the country. But this great invention is always tragic, that it can serve peace, but also war. Endless armaments trains soon rolled day and night: military equipment and cannons were the most urgent cargo. The army was already crowding into train stations, confident of victory, with cheers on their lips and flowers on their rifles, in wagons hung with flags and slogans of victory, to Lemberg or Liège, to Krakow or Mons. In the drumfire of Verdun the madness of victory died, trains became hospitals, and this time the railway saw the retreat of the defeated and – to the mockery of the warlords – in a wagon in the forest of Compiègne, the capitulation. Millions of dead on the battlefields, senseless suffering. Those who returned home found misery, want and unemployment. But on the soil of the collapse the profiteers and war profiteers and speculation were already thriving. But from the confusion of tangled politics there also sprouted the tender stalk of the first republic, in need of protection. But narrow-mindedness, stupidity and violence trampled it under nailed boots on the way to the thousand-year Reich. The monsters ruled and the world looked on and remained silent. And again the cry was: “The wheels must roll for victory!” And so began the nation’s darkest chapter, the darkest of the winged wheel: deportation. Locked in freight cars, penned in like cattle, Starving and desperate, naked and freezing, they stood, Helpless women and men, old people and even children, On the bitter journey whose destination was the death camp. But then the wrath of the humiliated broke out, No village was spared, not a stone was left on a stone, And bombs fell until the whole country was in flames, The cities were wiped out and the ground scorched. The war was more murderous than any war before, And the people who had sacrilegiously brought it about were severely punished. They wandered about starving amidst rubble and ruins, The survivors, the bombed-out, nothing worked anymore. And ever longer treks of refugees came day after day And wandered through a country that lay under rubble and ash. The will to survive forced them not to give up, to face the hopelessness, to try the impossible: to jump on when a hamster train was leaving somewhere, when a crowd was already hanging at the carriage doors. A place on a buffer, a running board at best, with the hope of a bit of flour, potatoes or lard. What was lying on the railway embankment was picked up by children, and many an honest man robbed many a coal train. And then the trains came loaded with the returning soldiers, wounded and bruised, torn, worn out.