She heard the sound before anyone else. She went out to investigate and found the young man lying at her doorstep. She watched as a burst of red replaced the dull gray of the cement under the young man.
“Help…”, he croaked.
She did not know what to do. She saw the Swastika on his blood soaked sleeve and kept herself from screaming in terror.
“Help…”, he croaked again. This time she dragged him in with the feeling you get when you do something that endangers you, yet you cannot stop yourself. She took him into the cellar and hid him. Why am I helping him? She thought. This man who helped destroy peace and prosperity in my beautiful country.

She did not know what, but there was something about him that stopped her from abandoning him, from throwing him out onto the street, where he will slowly retreat from life. He was unconscious, he would never know if she took revenge on him for claiming the lives of her dear friends. No, she thought, I cannot do that.

There was a nasty gash on his head and blood was running down his face in a hurry to soak his uniform. She brought a wet cloth and soaked up the sticky red liquid gushing out of his injured head. She tied a fresh, new cloth on his head and threw the now blood red cloth away. How did this happen to him, she thought as she waited for him to regain his conscience. She looked at him a little closer and saw that he was hardly older than her. 18 or 19 maybe, she thought. He had thick, wavy blonde hair that looked messy and disheveled. His uniform was wrinkled and caked with mud and blood. His boots were dusty and mussed up. She sighed and went downstairs.

His eyed fluttered open and for a minute his vision was blurred. When his eyes adjusted he took in his surroundings. The only contents of the room was the creaky wooden bed he was sleeping on and next to him was a wood chair that looked like its days were over. It smelled wet and musty. The sheets felt damp and itchy. He sat up and saw his bloody uniform and the wet, blood red cloth discarded on the floor as sears of pain shot through his head.

“Where am I?” he murmured.

Just then a young woman with long curly black hair in a black and white print dress came up the stairs. She was holding a white dinner bowl with steam coming out of it.

She froze when she saw him sitting up looking dazed and the young man noticed the yellow band with the Star of David on her arm.

He was just about to get out bed when she walked over, her face stone cold, and sat down on the chair. It teetered back and forth and she sat on the edge. Her hair was left loose and it was wild around her face. For a moment neither of them spoke. She spooned up the hot stuff and tried to coax it into his mouth. He pulled back and watched her.
“You think I poisoned it?” she said as a cold smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“You wouldn’t be surprised if I did, would you?” she asked this time giving in to the cold smile.

“Where am I?” he asked, either not hearing the woman or risking to ignore her question. He had to return to his army camp. What happened to his battalion? The last thing he remembered was unbearable pain in his head. And then everything went black.

“Right now you are in my family’s cellar” the woman replied. Her hair formed a thick black carpet between her and the young man and it helped her avoid eye contact with him.


“Why are you helping me?” he asked her,” “I know who you are, Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yes, I do”, she said in a voice so quiet it was a whisper.

It was so silent you could hear the flow of blood in his head and neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Then she spooned some soup and raised it to his mouth. He swallowed without complaining and as the hot liquid trickled down his throat he wondered, why?

She took care of him over the next few weeks. She cleaned his wound and changed the cloth. She fed him hot soup till he could eat something solid. All the while he worried of what would happen when he recovered and had to go back to the army camp. Should he arrest her and her family? Or let her go in gratitude?

A few days later, after he fully recovered she untied the bandage and cleaned the wound one last time. He got up and felt much better than he did that first day. She came up and saw him out of bed and didn’t stop him as he exited the cellar.
“Thank you”, he whispered as he was at the front door.

She didn’t say anything, but nodded and for the first time her lips formed a smile that did not show contempt. He bid goodbye and left. She watched as his shape disappeared from her sight.

A few years later, the young man was sitting in a jail cell in the Nazi army camp after he was court-martialed for deserting his battalion. He had refused to reveal his whereabouts after he was injured in fear of getting the young Jewish woman in trouble. He had not forgotten her nor had he turned her in. He doesn’t know why but… he didn’t. Maybe it was out of gratitude? He didn’t know.

He was just about to retire for the night in his damp, musty cell when he noticed, using the remaining rays of sunlight the day had to offer, a young woman in the execution site. Her hair was all gone, her skin sagged and she was all skin and bones. But, he would recognize the young woman who saved his life anywhere. They looked at each other and her eyes lit up. They held each other’s gaze only for a moment before a bullet flew through the air and there was an explosion of red on her forehead. She fell to the ground and he watched, still as stone, as they dragged her away, leaving a trail of blood. A tear slowly rolled down his cheek as he saw that her thin figure was swallowed by darkness, the same person who was the reason he was still alive, the young Jewish woman who had once saved his life.