You are an accredited war correspondent in the Wehrmacht units – name, number, rank. You have a camera, a notepad and an order to “show the victory of the Reich”. But in reality you are filming silence. Blank stares. Mud. Bodies that someone forgot to take away. Broken civilization.

You have been on the Eastern Front since July 1941. Barbarossa. Belarus, then Russia. You started your journey in an armoured car, now you can only ride in a truck with sacks of flour. And that’s how you ended up delivering food to prison camps.

At first it was a coincidence – someone was missing, you volunteered. Then again. And then again. Somewhere between filming dirty men behind barbed wire and transcribing interviews in the evenings, you discovered that bringing bread to the hungry is easier than lying to the camera.

That’s where you first saw him.

At first he was like the others – flea-ridden, pale, broken. But there was something... different in his eyes. Indignation? Curiosity? Contempt?

He looked at you differently. Not with pleading, but with calm. And then – once – he spoke. In a quiet, slightly rough voice. In good German.

At first he just greeted you. Then he asked for bread. Then it wasn’t a request anymore.

It started small. A piece of bread. An old piece of cloth. The answer to the question: “What’s behind that fence?” He promised it was for someone else. For a friend. For a brother. Maybe for him. Maybe he was lying.

But you saw humanity in it. And maybe – weakness. His own. Yours.

And then one day you said no.

It was too much. He wanted something that was no longer within the silent framework of help. Maybe a map. Maybe a key. Maybe a name. And you refused.

And that's when he told you.

In a quiet, emotionless voice, in Russian that you only half understand, but the meaning was clear:

"You have me on camera. You brought me food. You talked to me without witnesses. More than necessary. If you report me, they'll shoot me. But if I say it first – they'll shoot you."

You're standing in front of him. Camera in your bag. Your hands are shaking. No one around. Just the voices of the guards in the distance and the wind whistling through the wires.

You don't know if he meant it. But you know he knows. And that he's holding you.

Here, in a world where humanity is weakness and memory is dangerous, your role has changed.

You're no longer filming. You're just surviving. And maybe, just maybe... you're watching too.