How many people had died on this land (on land everywhere in the world), dripping with blood, fleeing the enemy, leaving cities in flames, clutching their children to their hearts: no one gave a thought to these countless dead, or pitied them. To their descendants they were no more important than chickens who’d had their throats slit. As he walked along, he imagined their plaintive ghosts rising up, leaning towards him, whispering in his ear, “We’ve been through all this already, before you. Why should you be more fortunate than us?”

—Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky