“But I knew, Elisabeth—I know what they did, what they still do to the men who wear the uniforms. Those men are victims, too—some of them, anyway. Not all are consumed by evil. Some do only what they must, to spare their own children from death. Knowing that, I stepped aside. I didn’t resist as forcefully as I could have done, because in that moment, I couldn’t choose between the soldier’s pain and my own. But I made the wrong decision. I know that now; I have known it every moment I’ve lived since then. I should have forced that man to kill me. I should have made his every move an agony; I
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