More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
To live is a verb that makes sense only in the present tense.
Brave people are not the ones who aren’t afraid. Those are reckless people who ignore the risk; they put themselves and others in danger. That’s not the sort of person I want on my team. I need the ones who know the risk—whose legs shake, but who carry on.”
Suspicion is like an itch that is barely felt at the start. But when you become aware of it, you can’t stop scratching.
“I think he wants to have sex with Renée.”
Those who go no longer suffer.…
Quote
A book is like a trapdoor that leads to a secret attic: You can open it and
go inside. And your world is different.
Mengele had managed to arrange to have himself assigned to Auschwitz, where he had a human warehouse at his disposal for his genetic experiments.
Ew
Good and evil somehow counterbalance each other. You could almost say they need each other: How would we know that
we are doing good if evil didn’t exist so that we could compare them and see the difference?
He looks around, and what he sees is sad: emaciated people dressed in rags like beggars. He never thought he’d see his people looking like this, but the more broken they seem to him,
the more aware he is of his Jewishness.
You are what you dream,
Mothers always know more than their children think they do. And
in this closed world, news leaps from one bunk to the next like the bedbugs.
But hate is too much like love: Neither of them is a matter of choice.
Every night gained is a small victory.
“My name’s Lida!”
The library has now become her first-aid kit, and she’s going to give the children a little of the medicine that helped her recover her smile when
she thought she’d lost it forever.
you have to treat prisoners properly, because they’re people, too.”
the human lives abandoned in his wake were unimportant.
“If we look at our reality, we feel anger and disgust. All we have is our imagination, Markéta.”
The six- and seven-year-olds
There are no barriers for the Nazis; their determination to kill even the last Jew hiding at the ends of the earth is methodical and unrelenting.
But war not only destroys bodies with machine guns and explosions; it also wipes out sanity and kills souls.
War is like an overflowing river: It’s hard to control and, if you put up a small barrier, it only gets swept along in its path.
truly brave people are the ones who are afraid.”
