The Light in Hidden Places Quotes

“It had taught me that people like to divvy up one another with names. Jew. Catholic. German. Pole. But these were the wrong names. They were the wrong dividing lines. Kindness. Cruelty. Love and hate. These were the borders that mattered.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“We're always living days we can never get back. So we make new ones. That's all.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Mr. Diamant shook his head. “Di velt iz sheyn nor di mentshn makhn zi mies,” he said. “The world is beautiful, but people make it ugly.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Di velt iz sheyn nor di mentshn makhn zi mies,” he said. “The world is beautiful, but people make it ugly.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. While darkness devours, and light steals. And so no one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“He’s trying to scare me, and it doesn’t work. And not because I’m brave or because I don’t believe him. I’m just already as full of fear as a person can be.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Look at our skin, Hela,” I whispered. “Yours is a little browner than mine, but it’s still skin, isn’t it? It’s skin over blood over bones, just like any person. A Jew is a person with blood and skin and a family, some of them good, some of them bad, just like everyone. Only they choose Moses as their leader instead of Jesus. But remember, Jesus was a Jew, too. One God for both, Hela. Our mama said that.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“What I saw was the joy of hate. The happiness of causing another person’s death and pain. What I saw was evil.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“We're always living days we can never get back," I say. "So we make new ones. That's all.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Przemysl taught me long ago not to divide people by their country, their religion, or even their preferences in politics. The city taught me how to put people in their proper places on the map. And I know exactly where to place my nurses.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Di velt sheyn nor di mentshn makhn zo mies. The world is beautiful, but people make it ugly.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Helena laughs, and in a world where death is a shadow at the edge of every light, I discover that I have to smile.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“learned three things from Emilika that day: First, walk as if you have important business, and most people will assume you do. Second, always have your hair curled. And third, help can come when it’s least expected, and that’s good to remember, because it means you’re never really alone.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“The world is beautiful, but people make it ugly.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“The legacy of World War II has dark tentacles that keep stretching forward, deep into the present day. For many whom I talked to, it is an ongoing war.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“I met Stefania Podgórska once, in 2017, though she didn’t know she met me. She had dementia, and after our visit, I went with Ed to help pick out some new pajamas for her. Which is a long way from sitting in my living room, watching PBS on a weekday. Both Stefania and Helena suffered psychologically after the war. Dziusia told me that in one part of her mind, Stefania had never left Tatarska Street. Today we’d call it PTSD. But ironically, dementia freed Stefania from all that. She”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“In 1979, Stefania and Helena Podgórska were named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, which is the leading institution for Holocaust education, documentation, commemoration, and research. Stefania and Helena’s heroism during the Holocaust has been recognized with numerous other awards, articles, film documentaries, television interviews, and a 1996 television movie called Hidden in Silence. Stefania”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“I had thought, for a little while, when the bombs fell, that maybe we might come out on top. That this nightmare life of hunger and fear that we’ve been living might be over. That I might win this game I’ve been playing against hate.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Przemyśl taught me long ago not to divide people by their country, their religion, or even their preferences in politics. The city taught me how to put people in their proper places on the map.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“It had taught me that people like to divvy up one another with names. Jew. Catholic. German. Pole. But these were the wrong names. They were the wrong dividing lines. Kindness. Cruelty. Love”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Fear comes with the dark when you’re lying still, waiting for the knock on the door. And fear is not always reasonable. I sat up in the blackness.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“On that day, I began the fourth part of my education in Przemyśl. It was wrong to paint all men the same color. Whether they be Jewish or Polish. Or even German.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Hadn’t there always been wars where the young men fought and the innocent died? It was horrible, and it was the world. But that was not what I saw in that officer’s face. What I saw was the”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“And that night, for the first time, I understood what I was facing. Before, it had been easy to imagine that all these terrible things were some kind of mistake. The misguided ideas of a misguided leader who in turn was misguiding his army and his people.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Mr. Diamant shook his head. “Di velt iz sheyn nor di mentshn makhn zi mies,” he said. “The world is beautiful, but people make it ugly.” It was a long time before I realized that the Diamant brothers had not run because President Mościcki told them to. They’d run because they were Jews.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“La ayuda puede llegar cuando menos te lo esperas, y es bueno recordarlo, porque significa que nunca estamos realmente solos.
Aunque parezca que lo estemos.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“El mundo es bello, pero la gente lo hace feo”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“Helena and me with angel wings, spreading from one end of the paper to the other, and under our wings are thirteen faces. Max, Dr. Schillinger, Dziusia. Siunek and Old Hirsch. Malwina Bessermann with Cesia and Janek. Monek and Sala, Henek and Danuta, and Jan Dorlich.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places

“We’re always living days we can never get back,” I say. “So we make new ones. That’s all.”
― Sharon Cameron, The Light in Hidden Places