14 Quotes by Affinity Konar

Auschwitz was built to imprison us. Birkenau was built to kill us. Mere kilometers bridged their attached evils. What this zoo was designed for, I did not know – I could only swear that Pearl and I, we would never be caged.

But as we sang, we forgot our hunger and our filth, we forgot that we were splittable, faded, dim. For a moment, I even forgot that I was mischling.

It is difficult to realize that part of you might travel for a lifetime with someone you hate, entirely against your own will. You may know what I speak of – maybe someone remembers you when you’d rather be forgotten; maybe someone has a piece of you that is impossible to retrieve.

What I knew was small, but it enlarged itself quickly. We were in a place where we’d been meant to die, but we’d lived. For what, I wasn’t sure – but I was hardly alone in this.

Everyone survived by planning. I could see that. I realized that Stasha and I would have to divide the responsibilities of living between us. Such divisions had always come naturally to us, and so there, in the early-morning dark, we divvied up the necessities: Stasha would take the funny, the future, the bad. I would take the sad, the past, the good.