First war winter

And then first war winter knocked on our doors.
The city was sort of under siege. There were no battle lines on the outskirts of the city but there was no possibility of the communication outside that small area which surrounded the city. And the worst of all, no power and no food supplies could be brought in the area.
I had pets before the war, huge fish tank with exotic tropical fishes and terrarium with the 2 turtles. Guess what, my turtles names were Donatello and Michelangelo. I loved that Ninja turtles cartoon too.

Anyway, tropical fishes needed warm water. So as the cold weather settled in my fishes started to die. I could not keep the tank warm. We could not keep our home warm. The heating fuel was same rarity as food and medicines. So my fishes and smaller turtle died.
At that time there were even more civilian victims. In the neonatal unit of the local hospital there were 12 babies whom had to be kept in isolated condition and they needed the oxygen. Those babies died too. They never got the oxygen. Later in the war we forgot about them. There were so many other victims that 12 babies were nothing. But at that time my brother was serving at the local military airport. He later told me that he was staring to unused huge bottles of oxygen laying in one of hangars at airports, the same oxygen that those babies needed to survive.
Me personally, ah. I was confused then. At that time I still could not believe that people can be so cruel, that such bad things can happen. And during that winter, during those cold winter night when I was sitting together with my mother next to the only oil lamp (we did not even had candles, we used animal fat which was too old to be eaten to burn), during those nights the nationalistic propaganda started to get me. I did start to believe that ‘the other ones’ are evil. I was half frozen, hungry and scared, and officials were telling me day after day that ‘the other ones’ were cause of my miseries.
I started to believe them.