The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 51. PRIDE AND SHAME HOW SPLENDID were those Serbian women! As head woman I made a rule, and tried desperately hard to uphold it, that there should be no weeping in the cell. But sometimes, especially when they first came in, the relief of tears was necessary. Then I hurried them to the toilet. There they were allowed to weep on my shoulder. Sometimes my blouse grew wet with those searing tears of agony. When I saw a Serbian woman's hands begin to clasp and twitch, her eyes to roll, I knew the symptoms. I would sit down beside her on the straw and firmly take her hand. I reminded her that she was the descendant of a great race. Heroes now were watching from their graves, sure she could never be less than a Serb. It always worked. By the way a new woman entered the prison we could predict infallibly her behavior. The simpler Jewesses, at this time brought in usually because of failure to wear the yellow armband, always arrived humble, frightened, obsessed with anxiety about their large families. There would be storms of tears, then extreme loquacity. Their own discomfort really meant little to them compared with their anxiety for those whom they had left behind: "Who will fix Ikey's food?" . . . "My husband, he suffers with his stomach, you know. Oh-dear-oh-dear-oh-dear," etc. But they soon became pretty sharp at making themselves comfortable. The Jewesses of education behaved quite differently. These Sephardic Jews of Serbia seem to me to be in a class by themselves. Resident here for many centuries, there are very few of these families, and they are greatly liked and admired by the Serbs. Attractive., subtly artistic, they have succeeded in combining with a broad and careful education the sturdy Serbian qualities of courage, self-reliance, and dependability. The two most capable, sound, and greathearted women I had the privilege of meeting in all the prisons were two of these Jewesses, Katitsa and Bianca. To think of their fate is one of the horrors of my wakeful night hours. The women of this type always came in quietly, unobtrusively, prepared to face anything. They fitted in efficiently at once. They knew it would be bad, very bad, but-it was their racial fate. They bowed to it, not exactly with resignation but with a firm, hopeless fatalism. I admired them every minute more than I can say. Only two Croatian women were brought in, separately. When each hesitatingly told me her name I said gently: "You are a Croat?" Their reaction was strikingly similar. Shrinking and raising their hands as if warding off a horror, their eyes wide with agony, they each whispered: "No, no, I never want to hear the word 'Croat' again -never-not after what they have done-never-never . . ." and they fell to weeping bitterly, hopelessly. I pitied them with all my heart. Although I tried to be especially nice to them, they sat in corners, oppressed by a dreadful racial shame, shy, with downcast eyes before the Serbian women, who were in no way unkind to them. They were quickly released again and left without saying good-by. The Serbian women came in grimly, sternly, as if somehow listening to an inner voice from long ago. They neither trembled nor would they, for a long time, smile: horror of what they had already seen, horror of much worse which they knew was coming, pride of race, and a racial tradition of courage made them almost indifferent to their fate. But rage and hatred of their ruthless enemies, repressed, boiled up in them to a point which sometimes threatened hysteria. They had to be made to laugh if we were all to preserve our sanity. Fortunately I have a very good memory for risque stories. But among our best jokes were the occasional arrivals of what are called "society" women. Haughty, disdainful, beautifully dressed, they would stand looking round at us with shocked disgust. Although it was the habit of some of us always to rise and warmly greet a newcomer, with these it was different. We sat in stony silence, waiting. And sure as death and taxes it would come: "I-I have never been in prison before-I am not used to this-I am . . ." The woman's voice would trail away. Then politely I would get up and say: "Oh well, you'll find prison not so bad. We, of course, are used to it, for we are all habitual criminals. Let me introduce you. This," pointing to some pretty child, "is a forger. This is a thief, but in a big way, of course. This lady murdered her husband. My own line is murdering children." A moment's incredulous silence and she usually had the grace to burst into laughter, in which we all joined. Then all was amity. Crude, you'll say, crude and fearful; but we were living in crude and fearful circumstances, and teamwork was absolutely necessary for morale. Invariably at first those hothouse flowers refused to work. "I never did . . ." "I couldn't . . ." etc. We had a cure for that. They weren't required to lift a hand, but neither were they allowed to go outside the cell or to participate in all our eager activities and plots. They just sat and sweltered, idle, alone. At the end of at most three days no one was so pathetically eager to scrub cement floors and carry night pails as these spoiled society darlings! The so-called White Russian women were an almost hopeless problem. Without the slightest thought for others, they moaned all day, they sobbed, they howled: "Will it never end, never?" How we despised these women, cringing, fawning to the Germans! They had only one thought: the saving of their own miserable skins. They had only one fear: that the Communists might be victorious, and then they might have to die. I thought how fortunate were the democracies not to need the violent and bloody reaction of Communism to throw off such as these. After the last war Serbia with the warmest generosity had received not less than 60,000 of these "aristocrats" fleeing from Bolshevism and had supported and found work for them regardless of her own labor problems. Now, when Serbia was fighting for her life, many of these same people turned upon their kindly hosts and became German-paid spies and informers. We had one notable exception. When all the world was momentarily expecting the collapse of Russia and the office radio announced it almost every hour, one of these women stubbornly repeated: "Whatever else is possible on earth, an anti-Communist revolution is impossible. Never! They will stand firm." She cheered us all up. One White Russian, the most beastly creature I came across in all these days, spent her whole time in thinking up people to denounce to the Gestapo. There were four men actually in the prison on her denunciation. She fondly hoped this would get her out. Little did she understand German methods: the longer she went on denouncing, the longer she was kept in, to force her to go on denouncing. Large, handsome, once a beauty, she went all to pieces. Like a dropped jelly she spread herself, sticky and quaking, all over the place. She set our teeth on edge with her interminable mumbled or howled prayers. She-she to be praying to a just God! However little sympathy one had for these sobbing whiners, they had to be quieted for the sake of the others. "Look," I tried, "this is noon: the morning passed, didn't it? Yesterday passed, didn't it? It passed. Today will pass, tomorrow will pass-it must pass. Each day you are one day nearer freedom. Be still, be still, and let the days just pass." When this didn't work I got hold of a piece of old newspaper and cut out rows of dancing paper dolls. These we stuck on the wall. Each doll represented one day, and every evening, with laughing ceremony (while the Serbs looked on in disdain), we fiercely tore off one head. Those childish "aristocrats" were comforted! Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel