The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 45. SMILYA LEAVES ME A SON THIS PARTICULAR PRISON was exceptional, perhaps unique, in that it was an amateur affair hastily organized. It was staffed by half-witted local scum, who were ludicrously unsure of themselves and who therefore vacillated violently between needless ferocity and lazy apathy. Almost no rules held for more than a day; nothing was a precedent for any thing else. The food and water we received, the very air we breathed, depended on the sour vengefulness or temporary satiation of the guards; upon the momentary moods of overbearing brutes. It was necessary that the three heads-governor, chief, and second warder-as well as the guards, of course, be able to speak Serbian. They were therefore chosen for their merciless ferocity from the Volksdeutsche, people of German descent living in Yugoslavia. The governor was seldom in evidence. We had two while I was there. First, a man called Wieser. He was a healthy-looking sportsman always bragging about his skiing. He made a habit of yodeling gaily across all the horror, so that we knew just what point he had reached on his rounds. When he struck, like lightning, it scarcely interrupted his singing. He was a great dandy. It was he who called Katitsa and me out in the middle of the night to wash blood from his new pale-green jacket: blood which had spurted on him from the freedom-loving victims he was torturing-our own friends.... We were unable to remove the stains. I had to change the black lapel squares on this jacket, and I have the removed ones here now before me, as silent witnesses of hideous cruelty. Gaily yodeling, he went off to his wedding. Was one to pity the woman, or did she hope to produce a brood of just such criminals? Wieser was temporarily replaced by a reservist who in civil life had obviously been the kind of shopkeeper for whom "the customer is always right." He forgot himself to the extent of being polite to some of the older ladies. He was soon removed, and Wieser, the yodeler, returned, in no way softened by happiness-in-love. You can't soften a stone: you can only grind it to powder-and blow it away. The chief warder, Richter, had been a carpenter, a furniture maker. Evidently he had been a good one, for he had been employed by the richest women in Belgrade, among them our own little Trudi. It was interesting to watch his behavior to her, how old habits of respect warred with viciousness. For though he eagerly desired-we could see him screwing up his courage-to scream and rave at her as at the rest of us, he couldn't quite manage it. He never succeeded in looking this small, proud girl in the face. For that very reason he hated her all the more. He was a sadist of the worst description. His face was literally like a death's-head. His eyes blazed in moments of fury with a really insane glare. It was he who taught the young recruits, mostly once small artisans or grocery boys, to scream. "Louder, louder!" he yelled (through the stovepipe hole in the wall between the cell and our office we could listen). "Put the fear of the devil himself into the b---s! Louder! Louder! LOUDER!" He was a pervert of the kind so common among the Germans that one almost expects it. The English-speaking peoples are, I believe, unaware of the prevalence of this perversion in Germany. Nazism has bred in them an almost unbelievable cynicism and contempt for their women, who in these days of subservient man-fawning, plus female perversion, well deserve it. Nothing is either sacred or ideal to them. There are no standards of right or wrong.-The Germans are in fact so identified with this vice in the Balkans that, in Albania especially, it is simply called "the German vice." Richter's pet among the boy guards was the creature called Honig, who traded on his position to wreak on us every sort of mean cruelty. Once he put heavy leg chains on Katitsa, the most loved girl in the cell. She took it with stern calm. When some of the other girls began to weep, he laughed heartily. He was constantly telling women that their husbands or sons were to be shot that night and then eagerly watching for a twitch of agony. He seemed to be always a member of the firing squads. I myself heard him delightedly tell other guards how a little Jew we all knew had fallen unwounded in the split second before the volley. When they piled up the corpses, however, he had opened one eye. Laughing, Honig described how he had put three bullets into his stomach. "Just to teach him," he said. He sometimes brought back last messages with a sneer. My friend Smilya V.'s husband, the finest-looking, most charming man in the prison, guilty of no other crime than being a patriot Serb, cried out to him just before the death volley: "Honig, give my love to my wife and my son!" "Ho, you Smilya," Honig shouted next morning, "your husband sent you his love." And Smilya, my dear Smilya, looked at him sternly-as God will someday look at him. We were at that moment on our way in single file to take our exercise in the yard, and I was just behind her. We were at the top of the stone steps leading to the door. Would she fall? I ran forward and took her arm. Her thin body was strained as if with wires. Stiffly, as in a trance, she went down the stairs. She took her place in the line. The guard yelled at me to walk alone. I walked behind her in terrible anxiety. It was wasted: she was absolutely calm, as if her spirit had flown, leaving only a mechanical body behind in a faded blue dress. Round and round and round in the hot sun we walked. A loud knock on the great prison gate. Yawning lazily, the guard looked through the peephole. He laughed. He undid the chains and the lock. He opened the gate and stood holding it with one foot while, with hand negligently under his rifle strap, he conversed with someone outside, evidently a friend. The women outside surged forward as usual to try to look in. He barked at them to get back, then continued his conversation. Suddenly a small face peered round his body. Good God, we knew those little bright eyes, that curly head: it was Nenad, Smilya's boy, who had several times come to look at his parents from a distance. There was a half-circle painted in white about ten feet round the gate. Not one step dared we take over that line or we were yelled at by the guard. As on our round we came up to the line, Smilya caught sight of the little face. She stopped. I too stood still. Slowly she sank to her knees, just looking at him. Like lightning the boy jumped over the guard's leg and shot into the yard. With a light, shrill cry of "Mother!" he threw himself round Smilya's neck. Without a word or a tear she held him to her as in a vise, while his eyes darted eagerly about, searching, searching for a sight of his father. "Father-where is Father?" he whispered. Not a muscle moved in Smilya's face. She just clutched him tightly while she glared like a tiger at the guard-who turned with a curse, seized the child by the collar, dragged him, struggling desperately, away, threw him out of the gate and slammed it. I raised Smilya to he} feet and, rules or no rules, I took her arm and walked on. The guard, perhaps slightly ashamed, surlily turned his back. The frightful tension was broken. "So good," she breathed, "so good he was! So good! The best father, the best husband in the world. The best son to his mother. So good, so good!" she kept repeating while sobs seemed to run all up and down her thin body. "Smilya, dear Smilya, darling Smilya," I said, almost frantic with despair, "you have only one thing to think of now: your boy. Nenad -only think of your beautiful Nenad. Think what a fine man he will one day be...." She looked at me strangely, her eyes huge, the tears at last running down her face. "What chance of that," she whispered, "what chance? His father is gone-and I too will soon be dead. What chance for Nenad ?" "Listen, Smilya, dearest Smilya, you will live, you must live for Nenad now." A shuddering sigh. "I-I do not care to live-now he is dead," she muttered. "All wrong, Smilya, all wrong! You have a great duty now: to bring up your boy as your husband would have wished to have you bring him up." And desperately I launched into a description of how well the boy would do at school, how he would study hard to become a splendid man like his father-anything I could think of. Slowly she shook her head. "No one to look after us-now he is- gone." "Don't you know that you can count on me, Smilya, depend on me absolutely ? Don't you know I will be happy, proud, to help you with Nenad's education? You know it. I have money. [By the standards of these poorer countries I was, of course, wealthy.] Nenad shall have the best education, I promise you that. He shall have everything that " Suddenly I hesitated. She looked at me strangely. I was in a terrible quandary: the dreadful thought struck me that she might commit suicide. If I painted too brightly what I would do for the boy (I meant every word of it) she might think she was leaving him in good hands and to a better future than she herself could provide. She might feel that there was no longer any reason for her to remain alive. It was for me actually the most difficult situation I faced in the prison. I too really believed, as she did, that the Germans would kill her. If she died I wanted to have the boy. He was now with an aged great-aunt, and Serbian families are very clannish; they hold onto related children with great family pride. I was extremely anxious for her to sign the boy over to me. But I simply did not dare to suggest it for fear such a transfer document would break her last hold on life. I therefore, perhaps foolishly, hesitated to write the transfer of Nenad to me; hesitated until it was-too late. For my gentle Smilya was dangerous to the mighty German Reich. She was dangerous to the greedy dreams of a brutal race for possession of the earth. How? Why, she might be tainted by her husband's love of liberty, she might be filled with an "unnatural" hatred for his murderers. So this quiet woman, who never in her life had had any other interest or thought but of her home, her husband, and her child, had to die. Smilya went out to her death, serene, content-oh, happy and eager -to rejoin, as she truly believed, the husband she loved so dearly. But in her heart she gave me her boy. He is mine. He is now my son Nenad. If he lives until I can find him he will be brought up in the pride of such parents. I managed to send out of the prison to a dependable lawyer a check for a considerable sum to be used for my son Nenad. Though he would not be able to cash the check until the end of the war, I hoped the lawyer would trust me sufficiently-although I actually did not know him personally-to furnish the funds himself and follow my instructions. He evidently did so trust me, for my last news, November 1942, from Mary P., through special channels, was: "The boy is in the country, well looked after." Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel