a flower

"Outside, it is late autumn. I am not allowed to buy a flower in the street, although I am among the happy ones, who have the right to 'pass.' So I gather beautiful golden oak leaves. Instead of a flower, a leaf, a dried, yellow autumn leaf.

"It is autumn and sad in my soul. . . ."

~~ from The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939—1944 by Herman Kruk