Dear Stranger,
I was right. It was during breakfast. We barely had enough time to hide in the cellar, which to our luck, was not checked and managed to withstand the bombs.
If there's anything worse than the unknown, it's the feeling that you may die at any minute. It was awful—the sirens crying, bombs going off, the silence preceding and coming. It was like a clock. I couldn't stand it. I still hear it, even though it's been an hour since they've ceased.
I don't have the faintest clue how we survived. How the house is still standing and nearly all the rest are reduced to ashes and those innocent people, innocent children with futures ahead of them, are dead. Injured. Displaced.
Never mind if they were Nazis and wished to kill us all, I felt sorry for them. They didn't deserve to die like that.
I can't see much of what's going on because there are no windows in this damp cellar. I don't want to know how the world looks outside right now.
Oh and did I mention that Papa and I had a proper two-minute fight yesterday? I still know nothing, but I also know I should've just shut up. (It still means I absolutely wish nothing to do with them).
I really couldn't bare their silence anymore so I sat next to Benyamin for a change. He's a strange fellow. In fact, I almost felt like he was my Saba.
We didn't have to say anything. All we did was sit our back against the moldy wall. It was a comfort in a way to know I wasn't alone.
I still don't like Benyamin, though. It's a shame I don't remember what he was like before the war. Maybe I would've liked him.
Well, he's not bad. That's all I can say.
—Etta
YOU ARE READING
The Sound of Silence
Historyczne"God had given us a miracle, and I wasn't sure there would be one next." Winter 1942, one of the coldest years in history. Hans Steiner, a man of his late thirties, looks through the iron fence, through the hollow eyes that follow him, and to the as...
