7
" All this time you’ve been saying, there’s nothing you can do to combat it, that you’re powerless to prevail against it, that you just have to wait it out. Wait, I thought to myself, he wants to wait until they’ve trampled everything that was precious to him. Please understand me. I wasn’t even twenty when I left my parents to marry you, and I left my home back then because I was repelled by everything there, my father, my brothers, the silence in our living room every evening. But it’s been just as silent here in our place recently as it used to be back home. "
― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz
8
" Before the eyes of the SA unit that had not yet marched off, Beutler crawled the last stretch without help. Not on his knees, but rather, perhaps because he’d been kicked, sideways so that his face was turned up. And now as the man crept past him, Bunsen, looking down, noticed what was special about the face. It was laughing. The recaptured prisoner lay there in his bloody smock, with blood in his ears, and his large white teeth showing, and he seemed to be writhing in silent laughter. "
― Anna Seghers , Das siebte Kreuz