There were many times when, even if by good fortune I managed some work on this book, I did not know whether I would be delivered into the clutches of the Germans the very next day. Many times when I was forced ... to bundle the papers up hastily so as not to put the Sisters of the Convent in serious danger. Many times when – to put it bluntly – the end seemed to be before me. In such circumstances you do not think in terms of creating literature out of all this material, or of having a ‘good story’ ...
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‘Jew – perish!’ From the first day of the invasion, the ‘Comrades of the People’ started to put this programme into action ... The door to the apartment of a well-respected Jewish family – parents and three children – who had ‘exterminated’ themselves, was decorated, before the funeral, with a placard bearing the following inscription from the hands of the Nazis: ‘Five Jews, who have killed themselves. Course of action highly recommended to others.’
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Paris in the last days before the Germans: a pale ghost on the brightest of days, in the midsummer sun ...
Just peep round the corner and – one street further on – the illusion, this phantasm of an enchanted city, dissolves into the mad frenzy of the Exodus.
... the Exodus – that dreadful convulsion of massed humanity in flight ... a grotesque mish-mash of vehicles: luxury limousines alongside lorries; sports cars alongside farmers’ carts; removal vans, mail vans, caravans, three-wheelers, motorbikes – everything from the giant to the miniature. And all of them teeming with people using every possible available seat, standing-place or indeed crouching-place; all of them crammed full and piled high with the items that each person considered the most vital – from beds and ovens to chicken-cages and doll’s houses. ... I can see a blanket, too, laid out in a meadow by the roadside – a brand new, white blanket. Beneath it, though, could be seen the contours of a body. A foot stuck out. It was the first death. For this man, the Exodus was over.
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Behind the barbed wire you can get to know a person better in the course of a few days than you would outside in a whole life ... You learn the true nature – and the genuine, incredible value – of the word ‘comradeship’ ...
On the other hand life behind barbed wire can also teach one how truly incorrigible the incorrigible truly are. ...
Individuals such as Ernst Friedezky, Alois Stern, Dr Otto Seligman, the young Georg Pollak, gave me more than I can say. ...
There were times when I said to myself that I was actually better off than my wife and Sláva, who were dying of anxiety over me, and who were so alone in that heartless, bestial Paris ...
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‘All foreign Jews now would be best advised to hide.’
To hide … where? ....
There was, of course, no question of sleep. Each of us lay there awake, silent, the same thoughts going round, endlessly, in all our minds. ... And so we stayed silent – heartbeat after heartbeat, hour after hour. ... If only this night would end …
Around four in the morning we heard a dog bark. My wife and I both leapt out of bed instantly and rushed to the window. In the pale light just before dawn, we could see a number of figures moving slowly, gingerly towards our door. ....
A contingent of seven heavily-armed men, against three women and myself.
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If I try, now, to put into words what we went through on that day, and what we had to witness, then every word I use seems to me terribly inadequate – and at the same time, not simple enough. One has a duty to bear witness. But if it were not for that, it would be best to say nothing. ...
For the rest of my life I shall have before me the small children, playing together in between the sleeping spaces, happy, carefree, without malice. And for the rest of my life I shall see the look of inexpressible sorrow on the faces of their mothers ...
Here, children playing, with their mothers. Over there, children playing, with their mothers. No more than a narrow street between us – no more than a couple of steps. Only, what was happening there was a beginning, and what was happening here was the end. That is all.
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When I think back to 12th November 1942, that cloudy, cold, wet late autumn day seems to me one of the most moving, and also one of the happiest, of my life ...
And the Mother Superior actually apologized that she could not offer us anything better ... We almost forgot that we were not in some holiday home, but in a clandestine location – in a hiding hole. I sometimes wondered if it was actually happening. We felt like human beings among other human beings, not like wild animals being hunted. ...
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And finally the third miracle: Hélène Rispal - Hélène, who had the brainwave – in the middle of a sleepless night – to hide us here in Labarde.
A triple darkness had to descend on us, so that we could finally disappear under the protective darkness of the clandestine world. And it is only a short time ago that we had to hide ourselves still deeper: in our cavity behind the morgue. Yesterday it would still have been a possibility that the Germans might take us. And now we are assured that it is all over – we are free. ...
Try to understand me. Have patience with me. I have not yet absorbed the new reality. I feel like someone who has suffered from hunger too long to be able to take a proper meal, even one composed of the most tempting dishes. ... And so I beg a little patience – a little time, yet, before we appear once more as human beings among others.
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To return ... where? ...
A little love and the little piece of daily bread: those are the true necessities of life. Nourishment for the soul and sustenance for the body ... Everything else is deceit and illusion – sound and fury. If I did not know that before, it is a lesson that life has taught me since 10th March 1938. ...
Well, I have found love. More love than I could measure. More than, in good times, I could even have dreamt of. More than I have deserved.
Will I be able to find the little bit of daily bread, too?