The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank Quotes

“I have told this because I want to make it very clear to a large number of people that all discrimination—whatever form it takes—is evil and that the world can go to pieces because of it. Actually, literally, go to pieces. Discrimination against someone because of his skin color or his ears or his hair, or God knows what—we can all die from that. It only takes one person to say, “He isn’t as good as I am, because he has …” You can fill in the rest.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“And then, that Kapo behind you. You’re just a poor wretch and there’s a Kapo wearing a splendid woolen angora sweater and a short skirt and high boots and magnificently piled up hair. She follows you with a whip in her hand. I won’t say that they were all like that, but yes, we had good reason to hate those Polish Kapos. To this day I don’t like angora sweaters.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“In the camp it was as if you were being continually pounded by heavy hammers—on your heart, on your senses—until you were half stunned. You can try to protect what is dear to you. That’s all that you can do. To thank the God of atheists on your bare knees that you are alone with your sister and there is no one else. And the mortifications you endure like lashes. The whole day you are on the alert, you can’t do anything else, you keep on thinking about it. That’s why we could never assimilate it. That’s why we don’t want it to ever happen to anyone—even our worst enemy.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“I remember something very nice about the French girls. They had been shaved completely bald. They found a little piece of glass and a small comb with three prongs. With that they combed their eyebrows, looking into the little mirror. Then they tied clothes around their heads and looked again to see if they weren’t still a little bit elegant. I find such things delightful. The Nazis tried to set countries and nations against each other and to attack and take away a person’s best quality—his dignity. And so I find people like those French girls so marvelous—those girls who fixed up their eyebrows with a little dirt in order to look a little better—really what the French call esprit, the strength not to give up, not to knuckle under. Never.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“We knew about the gas chambers. As soon as you arrived in Auschwitz, you knew about the gas chambers. How, I don’t know. But we knew it. We saw that huge, black, smoky fire; we lived close by. We smelled the odor. You can never forget that.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“Everyone knew immediately where we were. It was so insane—that moment of realization, Yes, this is an extermination camp.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“Near the bolts on the door, there was a hole through which you could look to see the landscape. If you were lucky enough to get a glimpse outside without being pushed away, you could breathe a little and put your thoughts in order.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“Ironically, later we used the money that we were able to bring to the camp to wipe our bottoms. We simply didn’t have any other paper. We tore ten-guilder notes into quarters and then we could use them four times. That was just fine, because it’s not pleasant to have a dirty behind.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“In the same way, we tried to be counted as political prisoners so that we wouldn’t be put into a Jewish work camp. We knew that the Jewish work camp meant the end. The absolute end. We knew that. Although it was scanty, there was information about those camps. Then while we were being transported, we only hoped that we weren’t going to Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Majdanek—camps that were already notorious.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“That day, we were all interned in the “S” barracks (the punishment barracks)—the Frank family, too. We all had our own problems, of course. I found my sister again there, and my parents and my brother, and we didn’t pay very much attention to what was going on around us. But still, a family like that, with two children. We knew that they were there, that they had been in hiding. What a shame to have been caught at the last minute.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“After that, they simply beat me in a blind rage, but I was no longer interrogated. Had they kept it up, I might have said things that I didn’t want to tell. None of us gave anyone away. I don’t know whether you should pride yourself on that or not.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“we had people who had authentic identity cards ask for the cards of people who had already died, but who had not yet been registered as dead by the registrar. This was a very safe way to help people get good identity cards. People who were seized often said that their card had been forged—which wasn’t true—in order to protect the others.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“Fascism was the evil. And it still exists! It is the worst evil in the world. Setting people against each other because of their skin color or because someone has a little more than someone else.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“I’m not going to fill out anything, and neither are you. I don’t want to have anything to do with this, and whatever happens to us, well, we’ll see.” So in our indignation, without even realizing it, we handled it in the right way, because I never did turn in my own identity card. And until the day we were arrested I used it in my everyday life. Isn’t that remarkable? Actually, we should have told a lot of people that, that above all, they shouldn’t do anything. Because I believed it was a cardinal error for people to feel compelled to report themselves for fear that otherwise someone else might.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“I had left the Zionist movement. I felt that we had to assimilate and that we belonged with the workers, not with the well-to-do upper crust; that we had to fight for a better society.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“While I worked at the laboratory, I went from being a Zionist to becoming a Communist. Although the word, “Communist” isn’t the right word. I didn’t actually become a member of the party until the beginning of the war; and left it shortly after the war. “Marxist” is a better word, because Marx’s idea, that all people should work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs, is actually a good solution; I still think so.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

“At that time, according to the conventional wisdom, girls didn’t have to study; they had to learn a trade. Boys could go to high school. Girls got married, so it was a waste to spend a lot of money on them. They did have to know about a lot of things, though.”
― Willy Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank