It was near the end. They had already shot my sons and my husband. I remember that people were saying, 'How can she do it? Why should she save hersel… - Ida Fink

In the evening, in my spacious attic room, I wrote, "Will I find peace here? Peace. I yearn for peace." Out of habit, I hid the sheet of paper under the mattress, where it stayed, blank, except for that one line of fine handwriting at the top. (p228)

He had that horrifying clarity of vision that comes just before death.

He stood between a lawyer's apprentice and a student of architecture and to the question, "Profession?" he replied, "Teacher," although he had been a teacher for only a short time and quite by chance. His neighbor on the right also told the truth, but the architecture student lied, declaring himself a carpenter, and this lie saved his life—or, to be more precise, postponed the sentence of death for two years.