No one stands up. Everyone is hypnotized. Even if their heads had been clear they wouldn’t have dared to get up. No one wants to appear cowardly.
I can feel my heart pumping. I know that I have to stand up and leave behind me everything that has given my life a purpose for the last two and a half years. Fine years full of danger, romance, and noble friendship in the underground. I am afraid I won’t have the strength to stand up in front of my comrades - but some secret power beyond my control makes me stand up. One hundred and twenty pairs of eyes are staring at me in the gloom.
"You are free!" says the deep voice with infinite contempt.
I walk to the door. I don’t know how I manage that. My knees are trembling and my legs are weak.
I walk down the stairs, past the guards who are still engaged in a discussion, and find myself on the street.
I am mixed up. Something in me is crying. Something in me is smashed, something beautiful, important, and great - and simple. But still - in another corner of my heart I feel joy. I know that this crisis had to come, and I am happy that it is over and that I have won. The illusions are shattered, the dream is over. We believed in them. We hoped the grown-ups would show us the direction. But they have nothing, nothing at all, which could give our lives a new content.
We must find the truth ourselves. In ourselves. My heart is joyful because the new truth is still fresh and unused. Only we will under-stand it. It will break out of the walls of the ghetto and spread across the whole region. Morality and peace and partnership - together they will show us the way to a new life.
* * *
Years pass. Terror. Curfew. British military rule. Kidnapping.
We are all "busy." Everyone is doing "something." Some are orga-nized in the Etzel, others in Lehi, as Avraham Stern’s organization is now known. Some belong to the Palmach and still others to the HISH. Here and there new groups are forming, seeking a new ideo-logical path.
Almost all of us are prepared to die for something or other. Only a few have something that is worth living for.
1947. The UN resolution. The war.