The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 49. UNCLE LUKE OF ALL THOSE BRUTES, we women decided, the prison doctor deserved the severest punishment that can be meted out to men. A fellow named Jung, he was a reserve officer, pale and slight, looking to be the kind of general practitioner mothers would call in when a baby had a sore throat. He too was a flagrant pervert, tender and coy with the men, cynical and cruel to the women. We had to rise when he entered. If some sick or fainting pregnant woman did not spring up fast enough he just turned haughtily and walked out. When I first saw him with revolver on hip and whispered too loudly: "See, a horse doctor," he screamed at me and loathed me thereafter. It was this run-of-the-mill German medical man who in the prison yard gently-oh, so gently-tore the bandages of the feet of a bestially tortured man so that we women taking our exercise-in single file, two steps apart-might see and be terrified. This prisoner was named Luka Golubich. I think he was the greatest hero I ever saw. I never heard him speak a word. A big, striking looking man, about sixty, he was a Communist, a real one-and there are few real Communists in Serbia. (Although the Russo-German pact was then in force, the Gestapo jailed every Communist it could hunt down and simply called every patriot a "Communist.") Luka-"Uncle Luke" we called him-had been stood on red-hot coals until his feet were just charred, bleeding stumps. His torturers had done this in the hopelessly vain effort to force him to betray his companions. I see him now being carried down by two strong cellmates and set in a chair in the yard, where the doctor savagely displayed what once had been his feet. Slowly, one by one, two steps apart, we walked by. Calmly he looked at us, one by one, and calmly we looked back at him, and not a muscle moved in his face or in ours. For Death-a gloating, German Death-was watching us, like a visible presence, and we would not give our torturers the pleasure of a single twitch of fear. When at last they gave up hope of breaking him, they shot him. They carried him to the place of execution. From the narrow crack beneath our window I watched him being carried out in the starlight just before dawn. Next day we heard that he had stood up on those bleeding stumps to die. Beside him, tightly clutching his hand, stood a girl of fourteen who had fired a German garage. And she sang until her little voice was broken by the crash of guns. Faithful unto death, brave age, brave youth, they lie together in a common grave. How can one express the pride one feels to have been associated in the bond of suffering with such as these! Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel