The execution itself did not take long; more time was spent on the preparatory digging of the grave. - Ida Fink

And what will you say when they ask you about your parents?" "Mama's at work." "And Papa?" He was silent. "And Papa?" the man screamed in terror. The child turned pale. "And Papa?" the man repeated more calmly. "He's dead," the child answered and threw himself at his father, who was standing right beside him, blinking his eyes in that funny way, but who was already long dead to the people who would really ring the bell. ("The Key Game")

None of us had actually been thinking about a journey at the moment when it really began; and yet that moment was accompanied by the hollow rumbling of wheels and the whistle of a locomotive piercing the silence of the night. (p5)

The days were filled with a kind of double waiting: waiting for news of Jadwiga and waiting for the police. I made myself get through the time, as if I were trudging through a snow drift: step by step, hour by hour, not a moment of rest from the hard labor of waiting, except perhaps at night. (p184)