The people were brave. They were dignified and orderly They were. They died in noble difference from the Hun. Yet should they have been so peaceful and quiet? Or should they have been screaming and clawing at the heavens till the sky ran red? Shouldn't they have scattered, those hundreds, in every direction like a flock of chickens from a stone? Their bravery was the bravery of the bullock who dies beneath the yoke. The Jews in Warsaw died, too, but for days they occupied an army. They say that these poor people had only one choice—how they would leave life—and the compliant chose nobly. While the Nazis were subtracting from the total of humanity, in every sense, their victims were acting to its credit, balancing the books. Balancing the books! The Germans should have had to sweep those bodies up like a cup of spilled rice. And they had no brooms, see? They would have had to pick every piece up between tweezing nails. Who pays you to die with patience? Death does. They were brave—sure. Dignified. Yet they went into the ground like sacks of fertilizer. Polite as patients, all right, and as though disciplined by their doctors, they kicked up no fuss and died quietly as the wind.
—from The Tunnel
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