preparation for the forced deportation of the Jewish population to concentration camps. 

The book ends with the following line:

Nevertheless Dr. Pappenheim found time to make the following remark: "If the coaches are so dirty it must mean that we have not far to go."

This line, in which the Jewish residents of the town are about to be deported, paints a stark portrait of what is to come. In the moments proceeding this, the people of the town are gathering at the station and observing their former homes, which look like "little pieces of folded cardboard." There is a sense of the unreal that abounds, as the townspeople do not have the dramatically ironic perspective that we, the readers, have in knowing that they are about to be sent to concentration camps. There they will face horrible torture, starvation, and death. 

The engine pulls into the station with four filthy freight cars attached to it, looking "as if it had risen from a pit in the ground," and the townspeople are ordered to board it. It is at this point that Dr. Pappenheim makes his aforementioned remark. 

This choice of words creates an effective—and disturbing—sense of just how delusional Dr. Pappenheim is. Although the novel depicts this man, who is responsible for organizing the annual music festival in Badenheim, as optimistic and rather eccentric, this final prediction of his borders on the absurd. Dr. Pappenheim falsely believes that what the Jews face in being deported to Poland is an adventure which will bring them to a new life in an exciting foreign land; his idealism causes him to ignore the glaringly obvious, ominous signals that surround him. Much of his energy is spent denying reality rather than building resilience for what he is about to encounter. When faced with the final symbol of the destruction of the Jews—the freight cars—Dr. Pappenheim misinterprets it, suggesting that he is still ignorant to the cultural, religious, and ethnic war that is about to explode around him.