At dawn the barbed wire was full of children’s washing hung out in the wind to dry

The mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed their luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children’s washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?

P. Levi, If this is a man (1958), tr. S. Woolf, If this is a Man / The Truce (1979), 21