"It has been calm for a few days, even pleasantly calm. Nothing special has happened. Better and better news comes from the front. It grows clearer by the day that a big breakthrough is coming. The Germans are running away from the Caucasus. The Stalingrad-Rostov and Rzhev-Rostov fronts have bigger successes from one day to the next. Today, as I write these lines, the Reds are 120 kilometers from Kharkov and a few dozen from Rostov. Leningrad is liberated [from the siege], and the Germans are driven out of Kronstadt. Today Leningrad celebrates the liberation of the city. In short, it is calm in the ghetto, even pleasantly calm."
~~ from The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939—1944 by Herman Kruk
