Tears of Amber

by Sofía Segovia

People need to see and hear the details of what is going on because their imagination is incapable of grasping general facts correctly. When a disaster consumes five million victims, this does not mean anything: the number is empty. However, if I show a single, individual man in his perfection, his faith, his hopes and his difficulties, if I show you how he dies, then you will remember this story forever. Erich Maria Remarque

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley

Edeline:

OoOo

Janusz:

OoOo

Polish Corridor.

Anschluss—annexing

He wasn’t in the land the Soviets had invaded, and anything was better than that. Almost since he’d learned to walk the paths of the Białowieża Forest, his mother had warned him: If you see a Russian wolf, son, run.

“Radosz is used to keeping his spirits up with krupnik. And now there isn’t any . . .” Nor were there any good spirits. Janusz had never tried the vodka sweetened with honey and herbs, but he remembered his mother saying that his father had abandoned them rather than give up the drink.

But he’d learned to be glad for life for its own sake; glad to live another day, and another, and another. Hungry, but alive to enjoy food another day. Cold, but alive to enjoy warmth when it came. Alone, but alive to enjoy company when it found him.

He heard because he had no choice. He didn’t listen, because he didn’t want to.