The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 57. "PREPARE TO SHOOT THE HOSTAGES" Toward THE END OF JULY great nervousness was apparent among the Germans. There was much sabotage in the town, and one heard constant explosions. Whenever there was the slightest anti-German indication, the armored cars rushed through the street and bombs were thrown into buildings, regardless of who was in them. We could hear the houses come crashing down. Discipline became increasingly severe. Past now were the comparatively pleasant scenes in the hot sunny yard that had made our lives such a strange mixture of the humdrum and the cruel. In the early days the scene had often been like this: at one end, in the shadow of the high wall, a barber lathers a fellow prisoner while the next in line, perhaps a fat jolly man keeping up his courage, tells with many gestures some funny tale. At the other end the sadist chief warder, Richter, unbends over a game of chess, his opponent a man in heavy leg chains-and when I say heavy I mean medievally heavy, like anchor chains. Interestedly watching and discussing each move is a group of other chained men. (Tony the forest ranger always won.) Here and there crushed little Jews are endlessly sweeping the rough cobblestones, the pigeons hurrying out of their way. The heavily armed sentry yawns and leans against the iron gate. In the center of the yard a crowd of guards surrounds our only colored fellow prisoner, old Jimmy White, a noted saxophone player, white-haired and over seventy. One guard is pointing a revolver at his feet while they all yell: "Tanz, Neger, Tanz! [Dance, nigger, dance!]" Smiling gently, the dignified old fellow shuffles painfully around, the young brutes doubling up with laughter. That is how it was during the first weeks. But that was all past Now there was much hurrying in and out of extra guard troops. There were rumors that the prison was to be attacked-that an attempt was going to be made to rescue us. All the hostages-ministers, judges, bankers, professors, doctors- were put in the cellar. Machine guns, searchlights, and a loud-speaker were mounted, and we heard that when an attack started, the governor would announce that if it did not instantly cease all hostages would be murdered on the spot. One evening there was a sudden frantic pounding on the gate. A stark-naked German ran in, screaming that the attack was about to begin. There was an ominous, deathly stillness in the prison. The radio for once was silent, and we all heard the shouted order: "Prepare to shoot the hostages!" Our door was slammed, locked, and bolted. The air in the crowded cell became suffocating. Would my women be in greater danger from outside or inside? I had instructed them when shooting began to lie down under the windows. I had also stolen a piece of strong wire clothesline with which I could fasten the door from the inside and hang the lid of our night pail over the peephole. This would give us a few seconds, possibly minutes, to move over to the inside walls if the guards began shooting at us from inside. Would it be the Communists or the Chetniks? Whichever it was, we would be ready. The Serbian women, their eyes bright, began quite loudly to hum our Chetnik song. Suddenly a wild explosion of shots in the cellar. The governor rushed out, yelling, and we heard the trample of running feet. "Who shot him? I gave no order," bellowed the governor. "Who did it?" "I had to," screamed a guard. "He was asking for it." Confused arguments and shouts; then silence again, ominous silence, and trampling the everlasting heavy-booted trampling. The night passed in strain. We couldn't sleep. We had forgotten what it was to sleep a night through. Toward dawn we heard again a banging on the gate, and running feet. Richter hurried out into the corridor. I ran to the peephole. A woman, her clothes torn, lay on the ground before that glaring brute. "It was not my husband, not my son! Oh God, he's only twelve. Spare them, spare them, for the love of God! They didn't do it- spare them!" She clasped him frantically round the knees. He shook her off without a word; made a gesture; turned round and stamped back into the office. She was dragged, moaning, through the gate. Nothing further happened that night.... Silent, breathless waiting. No sound in the town. Next morning a large number of men were taken out for transport -whither, none knew-but none of the hostages. These transports were the cause of more terror among the women than death itself. To be transported to Germany to forced labor, to sexual infamy, to slow starvation, seemed a far worse horror than to die outright. About once a fortnight, at the news that there would be a transport, the women ran an actual fever of dread. The ones selected took leave of us as if going to something unimaginably evil. Brothel, farm labor at the mercy of German farm hands, the ghetto, or the pit of the unspeakable concentration camps-who would rather die quickly here at home? You women in America, have you any real conception what would be your fate if the German heel were on your neck? Nothing in your experience, in your reading, nothing in your films, could give: any basis for understanding. It would mean the loss of everything: your homes destroyed, your husbands dead, your children dragged away to an unspeakable fate. Every goodness, every decency you lived by-gone, hopelessly lost forever. A student of history said to me the other day: "Even in the worst days of Genghis Khan victorious troops were allowed to rape, ml murder and loot for three days, and then it had to stop. But the German have gone beneath the low-water mark of ancient savagery-they never stop at all." 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