Paromita’s Reviews > Gerta > Status Update

An apology does not imply a self-indictment, but responsibility for the coexistence, today and in the future, of persons from the most diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. It offers the hope that as long as we cultivate an awareness of the unacceptability of the aforementioned crimes and are able to assume an open and honest attitude toward them rather than making them taboo, no such thing will ever be repeated.

suffering is suffering, no matter who is the perpetrator and whenever it takes place.

...They drank like only men can drink, and they placed bets. During the night, someone would always go missing, and the next morning, it was better not to ask questions. Sometimes they woke people up and made them watch. Sometimes they went to sleep without even cleaning up the mess after themselves. So with some of the men, we knew what happened to them. Then there were others about whom we never found out.”

“What would make you lose your mind?” asked Gerta.
“Random chance. Just like that, no rules whatsoever. The ones who were on night-watch duty and couldn’t have women drank, naturally. They drank like animals. And they placed bets. Why call them animals?” he said, more to himself. “You’d never see something like that in nature. In the natural world, logic and order prevail—you kill to eat and to survive...

“What does it matter to me, whether I’m taking care of people or of animals? You know what it boiled down to? Survival. During all those years after the war, the one thing that mattered was to survive. And after a while, not just physically, but also on the inside. Not to die inside and to find something to grab on to. I grabbed on to this here... You see, I found something here that I could hold on to.

So I don’t know. Home is neither here nor there. Somehow, I just seem to be stuck between places and memories. Some life, wouldn’t you say?”

“Bunch of swine, the ones at the top,” Hermína spoke up. “But it’s always the simple folk who end up bearing the brunt of it. Same as always, same as under Hitler, same as under Stalin. Let’s not kid ourselves. Crooks will find their way to the trough wherever they are.

...All vitality and longing had drained out of her long ago. She was no longer capable of desiring anything. Of blooming like a tree in springtime. She didn’t want it. It scared her.

...Her and Barbora. And the worst of it? She felt indebted. Because unfathomable as it was, she felt that at Zipfelová’s, nothing worse could ever happen to Barbora or to her. And if she could just let go of her expectations, reduce her needs to a bare minimum, stop concerning herself with how she had imagined her life would be, then perhaps she might even be happy here.

And as Gerta bent down to look at Barbora in her deep, infant’s sleep, she realized that there was nothing she could do; there was no way she could fight back. She couldn’t see a future. All she could see were the walls of the room where she was now sitting on the edge of the bed, all her strength gone. She was a human wreck who was grateful for a kind word from those who now owned her...