People usually say that a war is a bad thing and end the conversation there, especially if they have lived one wishing that you never get to live one. Nobody wants to remember because remembering means reliving it. A war always leaves you with scars on your soul and when someone asks you to tell a story you witnessed firsthand that scar starts bleeding all over again. We want to believe that war has a meaning, that heroes are there to save us and most important that we are the good ones and for the good ones things always turn out for the best. That's what we are taught at school, that's what we keep telling to ourselves when we learn the news that there is a war somewhere outside our everyday life... and that's how you can tell someone who doesn't have the slightest idea about war.

It was during World War II when the Germans decided to teach locals a lesson so that they wouldn't try again to fight back. They found out the someone from the village has tried to steal something from what they considered their own. It wasn't enough to punish the guilty one. They wanted something that people would remember and fear ever since. They caught his entire family; his wife, his children, his father, his siblings, his in-laws, everyone who had any kind of relationship with him, regardless of gender and age. Then they took them to the square for the execution.

They missed one person though, Zoe. She was working at the swamp when someone told her that her entire family was at the square waiting for the execution.

What would you do?

Would you run?

To what direction?

Would you run towards your family and die or away from them and live?

Zoe run towards her family and arrived a few moments before their execution. She fell on her knees begging the officer to put her in the line, among them so that she would die along with her family. She was crying, asking for mercy and the officer decided to show mercy. He went above and beyond what the soldiers expected. He decided to spare her life and not only hers but she could choose one person from the line and he would spare that life too along with hers.

Imagine every relative of yours standing on a line with guns pointing at them and the clock to be ticking for their execution. Everyone would get to listen who you would chose, everyone would die knowing your choice except one and you would have to live with that choice for the rest of your life.

Who would you choose?

Zoe stood up and answered:

"My mother and father have lived their lives. I have a husband but I can find a new one. I have children but I can give birth to new ones. There is only one person on that line that I can never replace; my brother. I choose my brother."

The soldiers took her brother out of the line and shot the entire family in front of them. Zoe and her brother survived that. Zoe never remarried nor gave birth to kids ever again.

That's what surviving is about and that's what survivor's guilt is.