I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle…. Writing in my mother tongue—at that point close to extinction—I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again…. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless.

What is abnormal is that I am normal. That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life—that is what is abnormal.

My faceless neighbor spoke up:“Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.”I exploded:“What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily:“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.

The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...

Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!" the Hungarian police were screaming.That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.

I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…

Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.