The Postcard Quotes

“There are, in the genealogical tree, traumatized, unprocessed places that are eternally seeking relief. From these places, arrows are launched toward future generations. Anything that has not been resolved must be repeated and will affect someone else, a target located one or more generations in the future.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“feel like some sense of memory makes us attracted to places our ancestors knew, celebrate dates that were important in the past, and become drawn to people whose family once crossed paths with ours without our even knowing it. Call it psychogenealogy, or cellular memory . . . all I know is, this isn’t just chance.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“For almost forty years, I have tried to draw a shape that resembles me, but without success. Today, though, I can connect those disparate dots. I can see, in the constellation of fragments scattered over the page, a silhouette in which I recognize myself at last: I am the daughter, and the granddaughter, of survivors.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“I search in the history books for the things I was never told. I can’t read enough; I always want to read. My hunger for knowledge is never sated.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Indifference is universal. Who are you indifferent toward today, right now? Ask yourself that. Which victims living in tents, or under overpasses, or in camps way outside the cities are your ‘invisible ones’? The Vichy regime set out to remove the Jews from French society. And they succeeded.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“It’s incredible how much is still there in the archives, like an underground world, a parallel world, still alive. Like the embers of a fire . . . all you have to do is blow on them to rekindle the flame.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“And the rest of the world goes about its business; we eat, we drink, we sleep, we attend to our needs, and that’s it. Oh yes, we know people are fighting somewhere. How do you expect me to feel about it—I, who have everything I need. No, but really, people are dying of hunger out there, we say, while stuffing ourselves with every kind of dish imaginable. I want music, and I turn the wireless dial, tuning out the news and replacing it with Tino Rossi’s beautiful voice, cooing about Barcelona again. There, that’s better. Indifferent. We are completely indifferent. Eyes closed, naïve and innocent, we do nothing but talk—we shout—we fight and make up—and all that time, men are dying.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“It would be wrong to call them memories; they are moments of life, that man hat es erlebt- one has lived. They are inside me, part of me, branded into my skin, you might say - but they're not memories I want to live with, because there's no experience to be gained from them.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“A true friend isn't the one who dries your tears. It's the one who never causes them to be shed.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“The uniqueness of this catastrophe lay in the paradox of its insidious slowness and its viciousness. Looking back, everyone wondered why they hadn’t reacted sooner, when there had been so much time to do so.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“I carry within me, inscribed in the very cells of my body, the memory of an experience of danger so violent that sometimes I think I really lived it myself, or that I'll be forced to relive it one day.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“A whole crowd of people, and not one true human among them.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“There are, in the genealogical tree, traumatized, unprocessed places that are eternally seeking relief. From these places, arrows are launched toward future generations. Anything that has not been resolved must be repeated and will affect someone else, a target located one or more generations in the future.’ You’re the target in a future generation.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“The salt water we put on the table on the evening of Pesach represents the tears of those who broke loose from their chains. And the bitter herbs remind us that the life of a free man is inherently painful. Listen carefully, son - the instant you feel the touch of honey on your lips, ask yourself: of what, of whom, am I a slave?”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Mais imaginer n'est parfois pas possible. Il faut alors simplement écouter l'écho du silence.”
― Anne Berest, La Carte postale

“If your need is to refuse to abandon the past, you must recreate it.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“That was precisely what Vicente loved about drugs: the surprise. The body's unexpected reactions. The chemical interactions between a living body and a substance that was also alive in a way, infinite number of physical experiences that could result, depending on the day, time, situation, dose, ambient temperature and what he had eating before ingesting the drug.
He could talk about it for hours, with the expertise of a trained pharmacist. In this domain Vicente was a true scholar, with significant knowledge of chemistry, botany, anatomy, and psychology; he would have been among the highest scorers if there had been a competetive examen toxicology.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Every city has its own smell.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“This manipulation of public opinion had consequences.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Oh, yes. This was in the very early days of the post office. But you had the right to refuse any letter that was sent to you. And then, of course, you didn’t have to pay. So people came up with a code, so they wouldn’t have to pay twice. The positioning of the stamp on the envelope had a particular meaning. For example, if you put the stamp on one side, leaning to the right, it meant ‘illness.’ You see?” “Yes,” I said. “So there was no need to open the letter or pay the fee. The message was in the stamp. Right?” “Precisely. And people have assigned meaning to the position of stamps ever since. Even today, aristocrats affix stamps upside-down as a sign of protest or challenge. A way of saying ‘Death to the Republic.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“But take a good, hard look at yourselves and ask the question: isn't this feeling of being deeply anchored in France the same way French Jews felt in 1942? A lot of them had fought for this country in the First World War. And yet they were put on those trains.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“In times of peace, it is the Ephraims who are the backbone of a people - because they have children and raise them with love, patience, and intelligence, day by day. They are the guarantors of a functioning society. But in times of chaos, it is the Emmanuels who save their people - because they refuse to submit to any rule and because they sow their oats in other countries, creating children they will never acknowledge... but who will survive them.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“La langue est un labyrinthe dans lequel la mémoire se perd.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“After the war, women in orthodox Jewish families had made it their mission to have as many children as possible to replenish the population -- and it seemed to me that the same was true for books. That subconscious drive to write as many books as possible, to fill those places left empty on the library shelves, not just by the books burned during the war, but by the ones whose authors had died before they could write them.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“And so the weeks passed in that surreal, resolutely carefree atmosphere common to troubled times, the rumors of war impossibly distant, the large numbers of dead merely an abstraction.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Wasn’t there also a list of authors whose books were banned?”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“The uniqueness of this catastrophe lay in the paradox of its insidious slowness and its viciousness. Looking back, everyone wondered why they hadn’t reacted sooner, when there had been so much time to do so. How they had been so blithely optimistic? But it was too late now.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Indifference is universal. Who are you indifferent toward today, right now? Ask yourself that. Which victims living in tents, or under overpasses, or in camps way outside the cities are your 'invisible ones'? The Vichy regime set out to remove the Jews from French society. And they succeeded.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard

“Jésus F. Criminologist, Expert in Handwriting and Documents Jésus and my mother were in agreement on this point.”
― Anne Berest, The Postcard