Chava Rosenfarb Quotes

Even when I’m not writing—and now is not a very productive time for me—I live with my writing and feel it is my anchor, my support.

one’s style, one’s method of writing—these, I believe, truly reveal the face of one’s soul.

On my voyage back into the Ghetto, I wanted to take with me all the questions that had tormented me after the liberation. Why had the world learned nothing from our suffering? Were the Nazis only the most extreme example of the urge to do evil, or was the drive to destroy inherent in human nature? The Nazis were, for me, the most obvious channel through which the poison of hatred could flow freely—but the poison itself, where did it come from? What was its source? In writing about the Ghetto, I wanted to find that source. I wanted to discover the essence of our humanity, to touch upon the source, upon the core of the human soul and see it reflected in the soul of the Ghetto Jew, who had stood stripped of every shred of artifice and pretense necessary to leading a normal life. There, in the Ghetto, humans had faced humans without any embellishments or illusions. They had faced the brutality of their fellow human beings, as well as the knowledge of what that brutality meant to their own destinies. It was as if the dams of a river had opened within me and I became pregnant with the idea for my book. And so it was, that by the time I arrived in Montreal, I was doubly pregnant: pregnant with my daughter, who was born in Canada, and pregnant with my novel, which was born here as well, but many years later, when my daughter was already grown and my son was an adolescent. I called this novel about the death of the Jewish community of Lodz The Tree of Life.

Accompanied by my sister who had also survived the war, I wandered through all the zones of Occupied Germany. There was as yet no organized transportation system for civilians, so we hitched rides on the top of lorries loaded with coal, or on military trucks, but mostly we wandered on foot along with bands of other survivors. We made our way from the wreckage of one German town to the next. We hurried from one UNRRA office to the other, reading lists of survivors, searching for the name of our father and other dear ones.

I live there a peaceful, idyllic life—and a life full of contentment. When I consider where I live now, and where I have lived, I cannot believe that I am the same person, that I am the same Yiddish writer and Holocaust survivor who has been asked here to address you on the subject of her life and work. Because neither my life nor my work has been bucolic, idyllic, peaceful, or full of contentment.

Liberation was announced through loudspeakers. They spoke of freedom. No one believed, or disbelieved. No one danced for joy. Even a smile seemed more like the grimace of thirsty lips. On the 8th of May 1945, the day the War was officially over, I was taken to the hospital, located in what had once been the dwellings of the SS guards. There I fought with the fever for my life, and won. However, the person who won that fight, the person who survived the camps was someone else. I had died in the concentration camp.

Even in the concentration camps, even by the glare of the crematorium flames, there were those who wrote. We were like those humming birds who sing most beautifully when in captivity

basically, language is an inadequate and limited instrument. No matter what language a writer speaks, she always hopes that it will be universal, that it will transcend the particular ethnic barriers that language creates.

I think that books lacking such an introduction are like houses that one enters directly from the street, still wearing one's shoes and galoshes, still wrapped in the mood of outdoors. But an introduction to a volume of poetry functions like the anteroom to a house, a vestibule where one may shake off the burden of daily routine, where one may take off one's coat and boots, catch one's breath, pause for a minute to absorb the atmosphere of the dwelling one is about to enter.

I respect all definitions of art, but I cherish most the definition which states that art is an expression of the desire to communicate on the most meaningful level.

Barukh is beside himself: "You are not the boss of my life, do you hear? I am a human being, just like you. Just like you!" he shouts, his voice growing increasingly louder the smaller he feels inside. "You will not curse me! No! I've heard enough curses in my life."

"Oh, when will there ever be peace between the old-timers and the newcomers?" one of the listeners sighs.

The girl possesses a carefree lightheartedness that makes Barukh feel more acutely the weight of the despair that he carries within himself.

"Where else have you been, tell me" she implores. "Poland," he answers. "That's where I was born, in a city called Warsaw." "Oh, Warsaw is really far! Did you like the city?" "In the past I did." "And today?" "Today the city seems alien to me." "Why? Well, of course, it's been a long time since you've been there." "I am still there." "What do you mean?" "My childhood is there, and my youth is there, and my dearest possessions are all there. Everything that mattered to me is there, and it is all gone."