Such photographs exist in every family. They were caught in a few seconds, the duration of the exposure, and these second have become an eternity. - Patrick Modiano

I was always amazed when people were kind to us.

Why, one wonders, does lightning strike in one place rather than another?

I shall never know how she spent her days, where she hid, in whose company she passed the winter months of her first escape, or the few weeks of spring when she escaped for the second time. That is her secret. A poor and precious secret which not even the executioners the decrees, the occupying authorities, the Depot, the barracks, the camps, history, time – everything that corrupts and destroys you- have been able to take away from her.