After picking up his evening groceries, he turned into Staalstraat, where a commotion of angry, volatile voices confronted him. A young couple were having an altercation with a German officer. People everywhere stopped, watching from a safe distance. Helpless despair hung in the air as thick as the blanket of cold around them. Held noted people’s faces—the shock and the horror, but also the fear, as if any of them could be next.
