European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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It had always been taught that in the dangerous event of Germans coming, the plank to hide under should be lifted.
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So one child charged forth to lift the plank where I should hide under.
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I quickly pressed it down again and picked up a Partisan handbook we had compiled.
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Although these children were very young, I just opened the book and told them to open their books on the same page.
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The text happened to be Ivan Cankar’s ‘Cup of Coffee’. It was by all means for higher levels.
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I told the best reader to read, but he said a few words and began to cry again.
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The German just kept on watching and watching.
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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.
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There I was, and looked straight in the Germans eyes. I showed him these children, indicated their sadness.
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He left the window.
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I thought he surely would come around and enter on the other side.
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Or that he had gone off to report to his unit to have them come and finish us off.
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But he never did show up, nor did any other Germans. The silence was deathlike.
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A quarter of an hour later the Germans withdrew from the village and all the women came running, all the mothers.
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The horror that ruled is beyond words. The mothers were sure that we had all had been massacred in the school.
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They came in to find us alive and well.
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Apparently, that German took pity on those children. Earlier that morning the Germans had killed off the wounded.
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Having to massacre the children as well would have been, presumably, too much even for him.
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So even among the enemy, wearing the SS insignia, there were some who were not brutal beasts.
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There were those who were just swept up into the current of the times and they killed merely because that’s how it was.
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