European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

My blood froze.

I admit it first occurred to me that this would end in tragedy: these poor children were going to be victims.

That I myself would be seemed perfectly logical.

The children had already witnessed the burning of their village. They all began to scream and cry like mad.

It had always been taught that in the dangerous event of Germans coming, the plank to hide under should be lifted.

So one child charged forth to lift the plank where I should hide under.

I quickly pressed it down again and picked up a Partisan handbook we had compiled.

Although these children were very young, I just opened the book and told them to open their books on the same page.

The text happened to be Ivan Cankar’s ‘Cup of Coffee’. It was by all means for higher levels.

I told the best reader to read, but he said a few words and began to cry again.

The German just kept on watching and watching.

I, too, watched the children and tried to soothe them but I couldn’t calm them down. I was sure we’d meet our end.

There I was, and looked straight in the Germans eyes. I showed him these children, indicated their sadness.

He left the window.

I thought he surely would come around and enter on the other side.

Or that he had gone off to report to his unit to have them come and finish us off.

But he never did show up, nor did any other Germans. The silence was deathlike.

A quarter of an hour later the Germans withdrew from the village and all the women came running, all the mothers.

The horror that ruled is beyond words. The mothers were sure that we had all had been massacred in the school.

They came in to find us alive and well.