$ETH The radio crackles with frantic voices—*"Fascist treachery!"*—and suddenly, the world is on fire. German planes blacken the sky, their bombs turning our villages into funeral pyres. We were told the pact would hold, that Stalin’s wisdom shielded us. Now, the roads flood with refugees, carts piled with children and sacks of grain, fleeing west to east as the Wehrmacht devours the land.

Father was called up yesterday. He kissed Mother’s forehead, his hands shaking—not from fear, but rage. *"They’ll pay for this,"* he muttered. But the news is chaos: Minsk encircled, Smolensk burning, entire divisions swallowed whole. The Red Army retreats in disarray, officers shot for cowardice while boys in uniform dig trenches with their bare hands.

The Party men shout about *"scorched earth,"* about leaving the Germans nothing but ashes. So we burn our own crops, poison our wells. Better ruin than surrender—we remember what they did in Poland.