It was a beautiful day, the sky was blue and clear. No cloud was to be seen, the sun was shining since early in the day. Our town which was lying on a slope was quiet. Innocent people were walking in different directions some to their job and some to the market where noise and commotion filled the air. At nine o'clock in the morning, a sudden wave of German planes skimmed over the houses while bombing and raking the streets with machine gunfire. The dead and wounded lay on all sides. Our anti aircraft defense was not responding. But did it actually exist? As soon as we heard the roaring of the planes above our heads, we were filled with fear, which aggravated our permanent anguish. We would embrace and ardently kiss each other as if to say goodbye. Fortunately, the menace of death would leave us as quickly as it came. The survivors from the streets who ran for shelter to my aunt's brought with them awful news of the latest casualties. A friend had lost his father that same day and entire families were buried under the debris. People in need of a shelter swamped my aunt’s courtyard which was filled with people, since the courtyard house had been spared together with a few buildings.
Then came the night with its protecting veil of darkness, all too fleeting under those circumstances. The elderly got together and decided that we must go and spend the night, some at the church and some at the synagogue where many families had taken refuge. Everyone agreed to it, thinking it was better to die closer to God; on the contrary I told myself it was better to live closer to God.
It is hard for me to respond to this story: So fortunate was I as a child that this type of horror did not exist for me. I can only be grateful for not having this kind of experience, and weep and share love for those who had to live in fear.
A sad story, Emile.
Today's children subjected to war are called "collateral damage" but in my youth they were considered by the enemy of being potential partizans, messaengers, soboteurs.
Children that had should been playing soccer where lined against a wall and shot by young parents of another younghters back home.
How could they do that, is beyond comprehention.
The day everyone could have been killed is the personal experience of a survivor bearing the scars of that day, like many children in Dresden, or Guernica, or Hiroshima, how can we tell that children to forget? how can we ask those mothers and grandmothers not no worry?
Churchs and Synagogues aren't bunkers, faith make them it, but then, the malice of man will even destroy those bunkers so he can beat his chest with fist that should had hold a plogh instead of a gun.
But, living close to God sometimes doesn't help when one is deep to our asses in a misma full of demons.
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