When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains

by Ariana Neumann

Their darkness was laced with vivid glimmers of light.

Individuals too were now empowered to voice their hatred and to act, unpunished, on their prejudices. Racism and violence were being normalized.

I realize now that there are sorrows that cannot be conveyed, wounds with which you learn to live but that never completely heal.

They were not mutterings of despair. What survived and resonated were their dreams, the descriptions of moments of happy respite or mundane frustration, tidbits that seeped through enough to give me a glimpse of who they were, of how they lived, of how, despite all, they still hoped and loved.

much can be beautiful and profound without being fully understood.

When faced with death, he had no real choice, merely the crushing sense of responsibility and torment that arises from the illusion of choice.

Duress, as international law recognizes, amounts to the removal of free will. Lotar acted under duress. Yet the conscience of a survivor is never so black and white.

we learn from our own experiences and from observing others, that unspoken traumas and lessons are not somehow imprinted in our cells. How we behave and who we become is up to us.