His wife

>fear can soften minds<

His words sound like a demand and in order not to cause any sort of conflict, I do look down. Though that still doesn't erease what I saw before out of my mind. Two men dressed in SS-uniforms were beating up a woman who laid on the ground screaming in pain.

My grip around his hand tightens even more as I hear her voicing her pain and by now I have both of my hands around his arm out of sheer fear.

Other than that, I only saw the wires and no people behind them, some dead bodies were laying on the ground and being carried away to some place else. Therefore I assume that they must have brought the prinsoners somewhere else now that it's about to be night. And despite all the darkness, I still notice more dark fog rising into heaven and the smell that makes me want to cry by now.

So you see, my reaction to all of this is strongly visible and understandable, but Josef shows none. Nothing, not even the blink of an eye. He just continues walking and his expression stayed the same while I started to shake.

After a couple more steps we get into a building which probably belongs to the staff. Here I nearly only see men in SS-uniforms, a couple of women who probably work here as well and women who seem to be just here because of their partner, therefore women just like me. Josef already friendly greets many people while I just walk behind him like a puppy and mumble 'hello', while also still not looking up too much because I don't wanna look into these faces. I already know that I don't want to remember them.

But when I see some people entering the room who fit in here less than I do, I stare up. Though it is hard to recognize them even as people.

Nearly starved to the bone, heads shaved so that you can more clearly see the pain in their faces as they also seem not to dare look at these people. Their skins seem to fade into a rather greyish tone while their eyes just seem fearful. The clothing they all wear is way to big for them and it shows when they move their arms to reveal a wrist that only is some bones and sticks as arms with numbers tattooed on them.

Immediately I feel the urge to get over to them and apologize. Apologize for what they have to go through even though I only know some clues and not the full story. Out of sheer empathy I want to run back into the flat and give them all the food we have, give them my gun so that they can fight their way out. If there even is a way out of here other than as a corpse.

As I continue to look at these starved out faces, nearly dead glances and obvious lack of a will to live; I want to cry aloud that they shouldn't have to live like this. Though they don't even seem to live, rather are they just existing, fearfully existing while being forced to be in the same room as those who bring them such pain.

Just one glance of a SS-man is enough and one of the women seems to shrink even shorter than I am. She nearly shrinks out of existence and I swallow hardly as I take my glance off them. Josef and most of the other Nazis don't even look at them, not even glare at them for a second as if their presence didn't mean anything.

It takes a lot of courage but I pull Josef's sleeve to whisper my question in his ear ''What happened to them? Why are they like this? They look so miserable that they barely look like humans.''

And still he doesn't look at them but at me as he answers in a whisper as well ''What happens to all of them, those are the ones who had the luck to be useful to the fatherland. And Liebes, exept for one of them, they are all Jews. So better don't call them people too loud or someone here will excuse you of treason.'' He softly strokes my hand while I carefully look at their clothing again.

Except for one, they all have yellow stars of David sewn on their clothes and one of them has a violet-pinkish triangle which is pointed downwards on it. So the star means Jewish, though what does the other symbol mean?