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For Kirsti, the soldiers were simply part of the landscape, something that had always been there, on every corner, as unimportant as lampposts, throughout her remembered life.
“There hasn’t been any butter, or sugar for cupcakes, for a long time. A year, at least.” “When will there be cupcakes again?” “When the war ends,”
“Well,” Annemarie said slowly, “now I think that all of Denmark must be bodyguard for the Jews, as well.”
Annemarie admitted to herself, snuggling there in the quiet dark, that she was glad to be an ordinary person who would never be called upon for courage.
The Danes had destroyed their own naval fleet, blowing up the vessels one by one, as the Germans approached to take over the ships for their own use.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said to them softly. “Once I had three daughters. Tonight I am proud to have three daughters again.”
“That’s the worst thing in the world,” Ellen whispered. “To be dead so young. I wouldn’t want the Germans to take my family away—to make us live someplace else. But still, it wouldn’t be as bad as being dead.”
Outside, she knew, the sky was speckled with stars. How could anyone number them one by one, as the psalm said? There were too many. The sky was too big.
But their shoulders were as straight as they had been in the past: in the classroom, on the stage, at the Sabbath table. So there were other sources, too, of pride, and they had not left everything behind.