Patients becoming hysterical

‘Yesterday evening was really frightening. The air-raid siren went off at eight o’clock, just as we were giving the patients their supper. The anti-aircraft guns immediately began firing very close by. Then suddenly there was a huge burst of thunder and the sound of breaking glass. I was in the women’s ward at the time, and the patients immediately began shouting and groaning, many of them becoming hysterical.’ This is from a diary kept by Lena Mukhina - born 100 years ago today - during the early months of the Siege of Leningrad. She was only 16 at the time, but the diary is said ‘to paint a picture of a city reeling from the impact of war and the struggle of its innocent, defenceless inhabitants for survival’.

Mukhina was born on 21 November 1924 in Ufa, some 1,000 km to the east of Moscow. In the early 1930s, she moved with her mother to Leningrad. There she experienced the first six months of the Nazi siege, part of the time working in a hospital. In June 1942, she was allowed to leave on a special train carrying evacuees to Kotelnich in the Kirov Oblast. But, somehow, she ended up in Gorky where she began a milling apprenticeship at a factory training school. It was not until the autumn of 1945 that she returned to Leningrad, and there she enrolled at the school of art and industry. Three years later she graduated with a degree in mosaics. After only a few weeks as a mosaic artist, and a spell working in a mirror factory, she was made redundant, and headed for Moscow to return to the flour milling industry.

In 1950, Mukhina became a labourer at the Southern Kuzbass thermal power station, rising quickly to become a designer - for the organisation’s slogans, displays etc. However, by 1952, she was working at the Kuntsevo Mechanical Works, where she remained for 15 years, mostly in the branding department. Before retiring due to ill health, she worked as a painter of designs on fabrics at the Kuntsevo Factory of Artistic Haberdashery, and as a homeworker for the Soviet Army factory. She died in 1991.

Mukhina is only remembered today because of a diary she kept for a year, partly during the Siege of Leningrad. This was donated anonymously to a state archive in 1962, only to be rediscovered half a century later by Sergei Yarov. It was edited and printed in Russian (2012) before being translated into English by Amanda Love Darragh - published by Macmillan in 2015 as The Diary of Lena Mukhina. Some pages of the English edition can be previewed at Googlebooks, while the full work can be read freely at Internet Archive (with log-in).

The following paragraph comes from the editors and authors of a foreward (Valentin Kovalchuk, Aleksandr Rupasov and Alexsandr Chistikov): ‘This diary, written by sixteen-year-old Leningrad schoolgirl Elena (Léna) Mukhina and miraculously preserved from that dreadful era, gives us a human insight into the last days of peace and the first days of war. With astonishing candour and a mix of childish naivety and adult wisdom, it paints a picture of a city reeling from the impact of war and the struggle of its innocent, defenceless inhabitants for survival. The obvious talent of the writer captures our attention from the very first pages, swiftly drawing us in and holding us in a constant state of suspense as we experience the tragedy and heroism of ordinary, everyday people, on whom nations are built and by whom history is both made and recorded.’

4 October 1941
‘I haven’t written for such a long time. But today I feel an urge to write. Dear God, what are they doing to us, to my fellow Leningraders and me?

I’m working in the hospital wing of the Clara Zetkin Institute of Maternity and Infancy Protection. We hospital orderlies work twenty-four-hour shifts: I work from nine in the morning to nine the next morning, then I have a day off until nine the following morning. So I am able to sleep only every other night. It’s very hard, but not unbearable. However when I don’t manage to get any sleep at all, just a few moments dozing in the bomb shelter, then it’s horrendous. For example, now it’s quarter to seven. Between half past seven yesterday evening and six o’clock this morning there were six air raids. Of these, two lasted about three hours, two lasted two hours, and the final two were an hour and a half and an hour. I’m working in a hospital and it’s very hard work, but I’m getting used to it. On the positive side, on days when I’m working I don’t go hungry and I’m entitled to a first category ration card with 400g of bread per day.

I haven’t seen Tamara since we composed that note to Vova and promised to see each other the following day. Yesterday I wrote her a note and asked Rozaliya Pavlovna to give it to Osya, so that he could pass it on to Tamara. So 1 still don’t know anything about the fate of my message to Vova. But I have no regrets about writing to him so abruptly.

During one of the air raids I somehow got talking to Ida Isaevna about friendships between men and women. You can love only one man, but at the same time it is possible to be friends with many men. Ida Isaevna told me that when she was seventeen she was friends with some of the boys she knew, and their friendship is still as strong as ever. Five of them from her class were friends - two girls and three boys.

We’re also two girls - Tamara and I, and three boys - Vova, Misha and Yanya. I don’t know why we aren’t friends. Do the boys treat us badly? No. Are they somehow unsuitable as friends? Again no, on the contrary. They’re exactly the kind of boys it’s good to have as friends. So what’s wrong? I don’t know. But in my opinion, we don’t know how to talk to one another.

It’s a pity, such a pity. In these bleak wartime days we are the only five from our class left in Leningrad. We could be developing lifelong friendships. There’s nobody stopping us. Dima, Emma, Roza, none of the other girls are here. But still!

Tamara and I both have fairly calm temperaments. The boys are also quite reserved. Relations between us feel somehow strained, because we’re so formal with one another. Besides, Yanya is not really like the rest of us. He’s so studious, it’s hard to be friends with someone like that. We would become friends more easily if relations between us were simpler, more straightforward. Like normal relationships between boys and girls. If we were attracted to one another. If they made advances towards us. . . and we resisted.’

18 October 1941
‘Yesterday evening was really frightening. The air-raid siren went off at eight o’clock, just as we were giving the patients their supper. The anti-aircraft guns immediately began firing very close by. Then suddenly there was a huge burst of thunder and the sound of breaking glass. I was in the women’s ward at the time, and the patients immediately began shouting and groaning, many of them becoming hysterical. Anisimov ran in with the duty doctor. Somehow they managed to restore calm. When it had quietened down a little I carried the plates to the canteen with another orderly. They told me I could scrape the leftover kasha out of the pot. I had just started eating when I became aware of a strange noise coming from outside the window - people shouting, and police whistles. I asked one of the nurses what was happening. She reacted with astonishment: “Didn’t you know? There’s a fire out there, across the street. The Karl Marx factory is on fire. Go and have a look.” She took me to the bathroom and drew the curtain to one side, and I saw how bright it was outside, brighter than daylight. Great tongues of flame were shooting up into the sky, and red smoke was swirling all around. Yes, it was an enormous fire at the Karl Marx factory, across the street from our building. I understood straight away what the noise was. It was the sound of firemen working and shouting to one another, fire engines arriving and the droning of the water pumps. They didn’t manage to put the fire out until four o’clock in the morning.

Vladimirova died in the night. They brought a new patient with a head injury and a seventeen-year-old boy with a neck injury, who had been one of the firemen on the roof.’

See also Only Tanya is left.

I pray increase my estate

Robert Woodford, a Northamptonshire lawyer, died all of 370 years ago today. He would surely have been forgotten had it not been for one of his diaries surviving down the centuries through the family, and then finding its way to an Oxford University archive. In print for the first time in 2012, its publisher makes some grand claims: the diary provides a ‘unique insight into the puritan psyche and way of life’; and it is ‘a fascinating source for the study of opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I’.

Robert Woodford was born in 1606 in Northamptonshire, and educated at Brixworth School. He became a provincial lawyer, and married Hannah Haunch in 1635. They had many children, only a few of whom survived childhood. In 1636, he was elected steward of Northampton. He died on 15 November 1654. There is very little further biographical information available online about Woodford, except at Stephen Butt’s Woodforde family website.

However, Woodford is remembered today because he kept a diary which was passed down through the family for centuries. In 1970, Oliver Heighes Woodforde donated it to New College, Oxford. The diary begins in August 1637 and ends in August 1641, and appears to be the sole survivor of several other, possibly four-year, diaries. It contains 588 pages with approximately 89,000 words. The Diary of Robert Woodford 1637-1641, edited by John Fielding (Camden Fifth Series, Volume 42), was published by Cambridge University Press for The Royal Historical Society in 2012. However, it’s a bit pricey at over £50!

Here is the publisher’s blurb: ‘Woodford’s diary, here published in full for the first time with an introduction, provides a unique insight into the puritan psyche and way of life. Woodford is remarkable for the consistency of his worldview, interpreting all experience through the spectacles of godly predestinarianism. His journal is a fascinating source for the study of opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I and its importance in the formation of Civil War allegiance, demonstrating that the Popish Plot version of politics, held by parliamentary opposition leaders in the 1620s, had by the 1630s been adopted by provincial people from the lower classes. Woodford went further than some of his contemporaries in taking the view that, even before the outbreak of the Bishops’ Wars, government policies had discredited episcopacy and cast grave doubt on the king's religious soundness. Conversely, he regarded parliament as the seat of virtue and potential saviour of the nation.’

A note inside the diary states: ‘who ever finds this booke (if lost) I pray be sparinge in looking into it, & send it to Robte Woodford at Northampton.’

20 August 1637 [first entry]
‘I prayed alone and I and my deare wife prayed in private this morninge to beseech the Lord for his blessing uppon the sacrament of Baptisme to our poore child this that the inward grace might goe a longe with the outward signe &, and that the Lord would make it an Instrument of some service to him in his Church in time to come and a Comfort to us the parents and surely the Lord hath heard us in m[er]cye we prayed not to be hindred in our sanctifcacon of his Sabath this day & to order Conveniences &. Mr ffisher preached in the morninge, but my hart somewhat heavy Lord p[ar]don my dulnes.’

26 September 1637
‘I would give some present to new Mr Maior but want some money. Lord I pray thee increase my estate in thy due time for the Lords sake Amen.’

10 October 1637
‘my wives breasts sore still with chopping [cracks in skin]. I pray unto the Lord for cure in his time my Clyent Some came to me with this P[ro]vidence’

16 October 1637
‘I was with Mr Bullivant at the George & dranke some wormewood beare, & with Mr Rushworth I was very ill after I had supped oh Lord p[ar]don my fayling & make me very watchfull for the Lords sake Amen.’

7 June 1638
‘The small pox are much in London, but the sicknesse at a very Low ebbe blessed be god though they come hether from many p[ar]tes of the Country that are infected.’

8 June 1638
‘The towne very full of people. Mr Robins fayles to pay me money.’

9 June 1638
‘The Lord doth graciously carry me on through diffcultyes: he is with me in the fire & in the water blessed be his name.’

23 October 1638
‘my deare child is still very sick, but the Lord is able to recover her, I now pr[e]pare for my Journey into the Country to morrow, & prayed for my Comfortable arrival at North[amp]ton & for favor in the eyes of the Maior & Bayleifes there & for presrvacon from the devouringe pestilence’

According to the Woodforde family website: ‘Many members of the Woodforde family have written about their history, from Robert Woodforde in Leicestershire in the 15th Century to the owner of this website in the 21st Century, constituting over five hundred year's of literary work. [. . .] Almost every generation has left diaries. These include Robert Woodforde, the 17th Century puritan of Northamptonshire, his son Dr Samuel Woodforde the Divine and founder of the Royal Society, and of course the Revd James Woodforde [author of Diary of a Country Parson].’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 November 2014.

The worst is yet to come

‘We stand at the turn of the year more hopeless and depressed than ever during these unfortunate four and a half years of the World War. In the past, we still saw the possibility of a favorable conclusion to the serious crisis for humanity; today, this glimmer of light is only tiny, barely perceptible. The war is only over in theory; it rages on in an even more terrible form than before. Let us not deceive ourselves; the worst is yet to come.’ This is from the published diaries of Alfred Hermann Fried, an Austrian pacifist born 160 years ago. He is remembered for cofounding the German peace movement, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and championing the use of Esperanto.

Fried was born in Vienna into a Hungarian-Jewish family on 11 November 1864. He left school aged 15 and started to work in a bookshop. In 1883 he moved to Berlin, where he opened a printing press. It was there that Fried became a steadfast pacifist and befriended Bertha von Suttner. Together, in 1892, they launched the magazine, Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!) - which from 1899 became Die Friedenswarte (The Peacekeeper). He co-founded the German peace society, and became known for advocating ‘fundamental pacifism,’ peace as the ultimate solution. He wrote and published countless articles in his magazines calling for peace and harmony among nations.

The Hague Peace Conference of 1899 was a turning point in the development of Fried’s philosophy of pacifism. Thereafter, in his appeals to the German intellectual community, he placed more reliance on economic cooperation and political organisation among nations as bases for peace, and less upon limitation of armaments and schemes for international justice. ‘War is not in itself a condition so much as the symptom of a condition, that of international anarchy’, he said. ‘If we wish to substitute for war the settlement of disputes by justice, we must first substitute for the condition of international anarchy a condition of international order.’

Fried was a prominent member of the Esperanto movement, and in 1903 published an Esperanto textbook. In 1909, he collaborated with Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine of the Central Office of International Associations in the preparation of the Annuaire de la Vie Internationale. In 1911 he received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Tobias Asser. At the outbreak of World War I, he moved to neutral Switzerland, and worked continuously for an end to the conflict. After the war, he returned to Austria to continue writing and advocating international peace. He died in 1921. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Nobel Prize website, and the Jewish Virtual Library.

During the war, Fried kept a diary, one which he later published in four volumes as Mein Kriegs-Tagebuch (My War Journal). The diary is available online at Internet Archive and, thanks to a ZIMD digitisation project, at this dedicated website. A short introduction at the latter states: ‘Bernhard Tuider [from the Austrian National Library], who wrote one of the few well-founded works about [Fried’s] war diaries, was fascinated by their power. 1,600 pages about the World War from a man who, as a journalist at the NZZ in neutral Switzerland, worked through up to 50 international newspapers every day. The war diaries are unique in their quality and can be counted as part of the heritage of the world culture of peace.’ However, as far as I can tell, the diary appears only to be available in the origial German.

In the diary, Fried documents his activities and those of colleagues in the peace movement; expresses dissatisfaction with the peace settlement; and details his journalistic campaign against the Versailles Treaty. As a whole, the diary served as a platform for Fried to argue that the war proved the validity of his pacifistic analysis of world politics. A more detailed look at Fried’s diary can be found in an article by Tuider. Moreover, a list of the original diaries is available at the online archive of California.

The following two extracts have been sourced from the digitised files and then translated by Google.

31 December 1915
‘The hopes for peace that were kindled by the article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung prove to be vain. The proposals are rejected by friend and foe alike. People’s minds are too clouded to be able to see that this is not about the terms of peace at all, but only the beginning of discussions. The tools of reason should only be put into use. That is the main thing.

On the other hand: England, England so proud of its freedoms, is introducing general conscription. This is a step backwards in culture for all, which we owe to this war. And a bad prospect. If England is only now beginning to prepare for a continental war, how long will it last?

In France, the Socialist Congress has passed a resolution in favor of continuing the war until a permanent legal peace is achieved. The resolution was adopted by an enormous majority of 2,736 votes to 76.

These are two events that do not mean peace, but war. The continuation of the war and increased bitterness, increased destruction. Hundreds of thousands of young men are to be sacrificed again. That is the meaning of these two events that conclude the war year of 1915.

Last year I raised the question here whether the terrible war would end on New Year’s Eve this year. ‘For those who can measure the magnitude of the shocks that these five months of war have already brought about, it may seem questionable whether New Year’s Eve 1915 will already descend upon a Europe liberated from war.’ - Questionable. And yet I concluded hopefully with a ‘perhaps.’ It is a solemn seriousness that, after the end of this bloody year, provides the answer to the questioning view of the previous year. And today one dares not look into the future of the new year with the same doubt. Everything that must come is terrible. The slaughter has lasted too long; Europe has been destroyed for too long. Our generation can no longer hope for peace. I conclude my notes for 1915 with a curse on the year that has passed away, on the year that has been stolen from us, with a curse on the insane arrangers of this war.’

31 December 1918
‘A year ago we stood before Brest-Litovsk. Today we stand before Versailles. Is it going to be the same? Is the Entente victors going to repeat the fraud of the German military, who then spoke of a peace without territorial cessions and compensation and then emphasized their ‘power position’ and forced the most shameful peace of conquest? Pichon recently spoke in the French Chamber of the annexation of the Saar region as compensation for the injustice committed against France in 1815. Will they ultimately want to restore the integrity of Troy? The failure of the English elections has strengthened Lloyd George’s power politics. All pacifists and politicians of reconciliation have been defeated. These are elections like the Hottentot elections in Germany in 1912. The new state of the Czechoslovaks was in no way different from Wilhelmine Germany in its early days. The areas of the German-Austrians and Magyars are still being occupied and Czechized. In ultra-German Reichenberg, where the town’s police wore spiked helmets in the Prussian style, the Czech language is being introduced as an official language. The Italians want to hold on to the German territories in Tyrol and are constantly coming into conflict with the South Slavs on the Adriatic. The peace that is about to be concluded and which was originally under the sign of the Wilson program threatens to become a new affirmation of the power principle. There is therefore a danger that it will not be peace again, only a period of truce, interspersed with seeds of conflict that will soon flourish under the expected regime of violence. Is it possible that after this terrible object lesson we are threatened with something like this, that the madness that we thought we had overcome has survived? It is clear that if this is to happen, the efforts of those who want to radically overcome the current situation, who believe that new life can only blossom from the total destruction of this society, will gain strength. The German militarists, in their delusion, were the pioneers and firing guard of Bolshevism. Should the military and the militarily minded politicians of the Entente blindly follow in the footsteps of their Prussian predecessors? - The victory of the principle of force in Versailles would mean the victory of the world revolution in its most radical form. Indeed, it would even leave no other hope that the unbearable pressure of the militarism that will still be maintained after this war will be removed. The people who have the decision to shape the coming peace agreement take on a great responsibility. It depends on them whether the institution of war is eliminated by a rational decision or whether its elimination is achieved through decades of terrible bloodbath in the civil war.

We stand at the turn of the year more hopeless and depressed than ever during these unfortunate four and a half years of the World War. In the past, we still saw the possibility of a favorable conclusion to the serious crisis for humanity; today, this glimmer of light is only tiny, barely perceptible. The war is only over in theory; it rages on in an even more terrible form than before. Let us not deceive ourselves; the worst is yet to come.’

Reality is unbearable

‘Reality is unbearable, because it is not fully experienced; it is not fully visible. It reaches us in fractions of events, snatches of accounts, echoes of gunfire - horrifying and impenetrable - in the clouds of dust, in fires, which as history says “reduced everything to ashes” although nobody really understands these words.’ This is Zofia Nałkowska, an influential Polish author born 140 years ago today, writing in her diary during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her diaries, which are said to have ‘stood the test of time to a greater extent than her novels’ were published in six volumes, but only in Polish.

Nałkowska was born on 10 November 1884 into a family of intellectuals in Warsaw. She went to a boarding school before entering the ‘Flying University’, a secret educational establishment aimed at teaching Polish scholarship (rather than the ruling Russian ideology). Aged 14, she made her debut as a poet in Przegląd Tygodniowy; thereafter publishing poems in other Warsaw magazines. In her 20s, having abandoned poetry, she began to contribute short fiction and articles to Echa Kieleckie, a weekly magazine  established thanks to the revival of political life in Poland.

In 1904, Nałkowska married the writer and publisher Leon Rygier, though they separated in 1909. Later, in 1922, she would marry Jan Jur-Gorzechowski, a soldier in the Polish Army, but this marriage, too broke down, in 1929. Her first literary literary success came in 1923 with Romans Teresy Hennert (The Romance of Teresa Hennert), and a slew of popular novels followed. For a while, she worked for the Polish government, in the Foreign Propaganda Bureau, but after returning to Warsaw in 1926 (having lived in Wołomin, Kielce) she ran a literary salon and travelled through Europe. In 1933 she joined the Przedmieście literary group. In 1935, she went to live with her mother, and during the German occupation, she ran a tobacco shop with her sister Hanna.

For years she was the vice-president of the Polish PEN Club; she was active in the Main Board of the Association of Polish Writers; and she was a member of the Legislative Sejm. In 1949 she was a delegate to the Congress of Defenders of Peace in Paris. In November 1949 she became a member of the National Committee for the Celebration of the 70th Anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s Birth. Granica - which would become her most famous work of the interwar period - earned her the State Literary Award in 1935. She died in 1954. Further information is available from Wikipedia and Culture.pl.

Nałkowska wrote a diary for nearly 60 years beginning with her early youth and continuing through to her death. These journal entries were collected into six volumes and published in Polish by Czytelnik. According to Culture.pl, her diaries show ‘she had a talent for observation and introspection as well as intellectual flourish and emotional depth.’ Moreover, ‘[the diaries] have stood the test of time to a greater extent than her novels’. The following extracts - translated into English - were sourced at Culture.pl, which also has more substantial information about the diaries.

1900
‘It is hard to believe to what extent happiness depends on money. . . Shortage surrounds me (. . .) There is something tasteless about poverty. It is such a sorrowful condition that one constantly wants to shake it off as if it was a sticky spider web. (. . .) I am writing at a table made of door laid on an old wooden washbasin and covered with a shabby time-worn bedspread. I [am] writing by light of a candle burning out in a candlestick greened with age. I can smell a wonderful bouquet of flowers placed in a preserve jar. Browned basket with Hanka’s stones, a very old dressing case from my aunt, a chewed penholder.’

1902
‘In as much as I lead a literary life, I write a real-life diary. There is no ‘fiction’ here. Whilst writing, I am always in a hurry to squeeze in as much as possible not to miss anything. I do not care about the form; I cram facts one after another leaving ponderings and effects aside. What I achieve in this way is a certain directness, certain freshness of life, which I highly appreciate.’

1913
‘I went to a fancy-dress party and two other balls and, in a sense, I bought myself out of melancholy. For a long time now I have known that it is a hygienic thing to immerse into a bathtub of foolishness and primitiveness. Yet, it is difficult for me then to close my eyelids completely. Through my eyelashes I can still see my distance from this cheerfulness, distance or even dysfunction.’

1914
‘I enjoy living. I am certain that if I wasn’t ill, I could say that I am happy. To observe the world from a hammock, balcony or various points in a forest. To think, think, think - beginning with early morning when I am so deathly exhausted and sleepy as if night did not exist at all, to the evening when looking in the mirror I can see that I am not young any more. The latter one is surly sad but not that important - as my curiosity about the world has remained unchanged; it’s an insatiable, burning curiosity.’

1915
‘My acquaintanceships have turned significantly licentious. Every single day there are visitors, groups of visitors I should say. However, I have always enjoyed looking at people - and even more so since I derive less pleasure from looking at myself.’

1 April 1942
‘It seems to me that I experience the irreversible and irretrievable passage of time stronger than others. Perhaps, the reason for it is my poor memory, who knows, if it hasn’t already started to weaken. The passage of my emotions and the passage of people who keep leaving and passing away, who leave nothing behind: this is the sole drive behind my writing. As always, I am not concerned with historical events, fate of entire nations, facts passing in the back motion - this is not what tempts me as others will deal with it in a much better way - but with the life as I have seen and experienced myself, that is totally doomed to failure. Not only am I someone in a boat drifting against the tide but as shores pass by, I am leaving myself behind. But the water itself, the essence of life motion, continues to pass out of my memory. Drifting, I keep leaving myself on those shores and at the same time I am sailing around myself. And I fail to achieve the goal of keeping records. I will never succeed, never be on time, never embrace, never accomplish, never remember everything. Pooh, it’s gone, it has evaporated, it’s lost for good. It sounds ridiculous that the most important of all my ‘worries’ is that everything will perish and be wasted, and I am the one to blame.’

28 April 1943
‘Reality is unbearable, because it is not fully experienced; it is not fully visible. It reaches us in fractions of events, snatches of accounts, echoes of gunfire - horrifying and impenetrable - in the clouds of dust, in fires, which as history says “reduced everything to ashes” although nobody really understands these words. This reality, both distant and happening next door, is bearable. What you cannot bear are your thoughts.’

29 April 1943
‘Solemn marches of the resigned, jumps into the flames, leaps into the dark. (. . .) I have lived next to it, I can live! But finally I feel bad, finally I have been changing into someone else. How can I be forced to it, to be inside it, to accept it while staying alive! It is not only a torture but also a disgrace. It is a terrible shame, not only compassion. One feels guilty for making any efforts to survive, not to go insane, or somehow retain yourself in this terror.’

14 December 1943
‘It has still continued, it has repeated over and over again - similar days go by: raids and then executions in the city streets. Or there - this I know. I think that I will be myself at that time, that I will never stop being myself. I think of it as if it was a discovery. When I walk where I don’t want to, when I am forced to leave my makeshift bed, my books and my letter files behind, and to do what seems so difficult when one is still surrounded by them - till the very last moment, however, I will be left with myself, who will be with me. And in this sense, I will remain myself. Because what is really important in the final moments are the morale and the peace that I am so certain of, as well as a total restraint of despair – because there will be no fear. Fear will be turned around; frozen; fear will be exactly that: resilience and strength. I can achieve it all if I am still myself. - That’s what I believe and that’s how I settle my own matters. Yet, it does not settle the matters of the others: those young ones whose lives are unfulfilled.

1 September 1946
‘I look like the old woman that I am. And realizing that old age is a shame, a disability; that an old age disqualifies; and keeping up appearances, a hairdo, a face “made-up” in spite of anything, neat clothes make it worse, make it the more visible. That’s it.’