I was fascinated by the story of a Nazi soldier he had killed, a blond man called Hans, to whom Mihal had offered water to wash the blood from his mouth while he was on his last breath. Hans had refused, continuing to mutter, “Heil Hitler” instead. I asked Mihal to describe how he had killed Hans, but he preferred to talk about the last thing he remembered of him: his thin moustache, a moustache that had not fully grown yet, he said. “My own moustache had not grown either,” he added, and I was puzzled by how he described Hans almost with affection, as if he were recalling a long-lost friend
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