Again we thought, let us survive-but now we were talking about the bombs and the rattling guns. (p237) - Ida Fink

Later she used to say: The place where everything almost ended. She meant the long, gray stone building on the circular plaza planted with trees. But why that place? After all, there were other places equally, if not more deserving of that description. And yet, thirty years later, it was that place she went to see, only that one place. (p226)

Each day and night of those weeks could fill a book, if only the pen could take on this burden of despair and helpless loneliness.

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)