"Human inhumane"

time and place: Autumn, 1944, Warsaw neighbourhood

    After 63 days the Warsaw Uprising collapsed. It bleed to death. The fight of the Polish home army with the German occupant, taking place on the Warsaw’s streets, ended in defeat. Even children took part in the Uprising. The city was destroyed by numerous bombings and demolished by the German regular armies. During these two bloody months died about 16 thousand of insurgents and over 150 thousand of civilians (most of them murdered in executions) (!). Smouldering ruins and severe repressions awaited those who survived. The Germans soldiers were throwing people out of their homes. They formed long columns of Warsaw inhabitants took them in the unknown direction.

     Zeno marched in the crowd of people. On the sides of the column walked German soldiers. They had fierce faces and hard looks. Each of them was holding a machine gun ready to fire. Escape in such conditions was a certain death. But what was waiting for Zeno at the end of this road? He was starving and exhausted. He could barely walk. However, he was young and had the strength that the older people in the column lacked. They often fell by the road and stay there forever. They died of exhaustion or they got a bullet in the head from a German soldier.

    Zeno made a decision - must run away. It didn’t make a difference to die here and now or in a few days preceded by agony. He only had to wait for the right moment. They were walking among fields. It was not a good place to escape. The fields were ploughed and cut only with deep grooves. He would be an easily visible target in the open space. But suddenly he felt the impulse. He grabbed a friend walking next to him. He jumped of the track pulling her by the hand. After a dozen or so steps they fell in a furrow. They flattened themselves against the ground because there was virtually no fiscal cover between them and the eyes of the guards. Fearful Zeno turned his head and turned his locked to the guard. The German soldier was looking at him. Zeno froze. He waited for the shout: "Halt!" and a shots from the machine gun. Luckily, the soldier turned his head away pretending he had not seen the incident.

    We easily stick a tag: the bad one, the good one. Nevertheless, in this case a "bad one" in a simple, human impulse saved life to my future grandfather.