The Silence In Between

Mozart said that music is not in the notes but in the silence in between. I think that's where our souls are – hidden in that silence.

In Berlin, people were saying the optimists were learning English and the pessimists Russian.

said. ‘And we are guilty. We did nothing. And in doing nothing, we gave our consent.

were bystanders, not perpetrators. But in that moment, I realized we were all guilty. And we would be punished.

Others – through fear, ignorance or sheer selfishness – chose to look at the sun so the shadows fell behind them, unseen but still present.

hate that I’m German; I hate that I, too, carry our nation’s shame on my shoulders. I was born after the war; the guilt shouldn’t be mine, and yet it is.

But we haven’t done anything,’ she repeated, quieter this time. ‘We’re just women. We can’t be punished for what the men have done. For what our leaders ordered.’ ‘They don’t care,’ I said. ‘And we are guilty. We did nothing. And in doing nothing, we gave our consent.’ It wasn’t until I said it that I fully realized the truth of those words.

These are stories from the past, but they are still echoing now, in the present. As I write this, Russian forces are using rape as a weapon of war against Ukrainian women; deported mothers are being separated from their children in the US; border walls are being built and fortified at an unprecedented rate across the globe (there are currently seventy-four in existence). But this much is clear: when walls are built, people will find a way over or under them; when families are separated, they do everything in their power to be reunited; and when women are victims, they find the courage to speak up, to band together, to survive.

Evil demanded little of me – it merely asked me to stay silent, to do nothing. And I complied.