Resistance Quotes
"You only had to be stupid once, and the game was over."
"The isolation gave total power to the German invaders. Power to control, to lie, and to kill."
"We were increasingly aware that time was running out."
"They were headed for death camps, designed to kill hundreds or even thousands of people a day."
"Yes, I very much intended to be their problem."
"The ghettos played a key role in their plans, suspending the Jews in a halfway point to everything. Half-starved, treated as much like animals as humans. Existing halfway between hope and despair."
"Halfway between life and death. The one became the other in the ghettos."
"If I’d learned anything from this war, it’s that we can never go back."
"I was utterly ashamed of myself, and vowed in that very moment to find a way to remember them, to honor them."
"The Germans were preparing for the complete annihilation of the Jews."
"My father should be in the workers' group, but I'd been told he faked an injury during the division of the ghetto, ensuring that he remained with my mother, listed as a nonworker."
"My mother was alive only in the sense that her heart continued to beat."
"Knowing what had happened to Sara was awful, but the uncertainty with Yitzchak was much worse."
"A hanging sheet now divided this room between my parents and another couple, and three more families had crowded into the other rooms of this tiny apartment."
"It occurred to me as I looked at their cramped conditions that if the space was divided evenly, each person’s share would be roughly the size of a coffin."
"At least we were allowed some privacy in the bedroom, but our conversation would have to be brief and meaningless since the others, with nothing better to do, were almost certainly listening."
"These were my parents in name and by blood, but they didn’t feel like my parents anymore, not as we once were."
"My father gestured to the same small chair where I usually sat, and he and my mother settled on the wood crates on the floor that served as their bed."
"Please don’t believe any rumors from inside the ghetto."
"The ghettos are safer. Out there we were harassed, beaten. Here, at least we are alone with our own people."
"I believe in God's promises, but I've run out of patience waiting for them."
"The animal who wanders free has no idea what is happening to the one caught in the trap."
"If they leave her outside tonight, by morning she truly will be sick, or dead from exposure."
"The only favor those traitors received was a one-way trip on the trains."
"Maybe it’d be better. Then they ... did this. It hurt so much that I screamed, loud enough to scare them."
"I never let myself believe in a future where evil wins."
"Maybe we needed it, but now we were facing a full day ahead in which walking was unsafe and hiding was unbearable."
"Chocolate does not take sides in a war, and that is a good thing."
"What happens to me when they discover the truth? I’m sorry for what happened to your friend, but take my advice and stay out of it."
"Life offered good things because life itself is good. And whether I had days left, or months, or years, I wanted to make the most of every moment."
"I wished we could, truly. It seemed cruel to discover Rubin was still alive, only to have to say good-bye already."
"Don’t let yourself believe that this is over."
"We already know how this will end, didn’t we?"
"If we accept that all Germans are not Nazis, and all Poles are not against us, then can’t we accept that Esther is not her father?"
"Our day had been spent hastily moving the last of our supplies into the bunkers and helping people get to their assigned places."
"If I died in this battle … when I died, I needed to make my final moments count for something. Not this."
"It wasn’t just me. Most of us accepted the bread and milk, but looked at the stew as if it was too much to manage all at once."
"We just need to remember how we were betrayed."
"We will fight there for the Draengers, and Dolek, and for all of Akiva."
"A righteous resistance was victory in itself, no matter the outcome."
"You’ve got to stay in the bunkers now," Yitzchak said. "And we’re needed out there."
"Remember the advice you gave me once? Sometimes the best help you can give is to stay out of the way."
"We proved that there was value in faith. There was value in loyalty."
"Historians might say that the Jews lost every uprising we attempted in this war, that every resistance movement failed. I disagree."