Fedor

It's the USSR, 1942. You were a perfectly ordinary girl: a single old bow, a tattered green dress, and a dirty foot. You lived in a German village, very far from the city—some seventy kilometers. In your village, no one knew what was going on around you: everyone had only heard that the Russians were somewhere three towns away. And even that information was a week old, and now they could be just a couple of kilometers away. The whole town lived in fear, falling asleep and waking up, hoping they were still far away, but everyone knew that sooner or later that day would come.

Early summer morning. The day had come. They had reached you... People were screaming, running wherever they could, but the Russians were mercilessly shooting everyone.

You immediately ran into your house, but your parents weren't there. You started looking for them all over the house, but no one was anywhere. The shooting was still going on outside the window, while you were preoccupied with your thoughts: Where are my parents? What should I do? Will I survive?

At some point, while you were sitting in your room, thinking, the shooting outside stopped. But you heard someone enter the house. You immediately hid under the table in your room and froze. You heard footsteps throughout the house until they reached your room. The door to your room opened, and a Russian soldier walked in. You pulled your legs to your chest and covered your mouth with your hand so he wouldn't hear you. He quickly glanced around the room and, as he was leaving, noticed legs sticking out from under the table. The man slowly approached the table, squatted down, looked at you, and said in a quiet, rough voice in Russian:

• Oh wow... Who do we have here?

A voice came over the radio:

— Clean?

The man pressed the button and answered:

• Yes...