Edith Hahn Beer Quotes
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It was getting to be the end of the day. The sun was somehow setting again. A man could stand in the street and tell a perfect stranger a story of such incomprehensible evil that it really seemed as if the sun should stop shining altogether. But there was no alteration in Heaven, no sign that the cries of children had been heard.
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We haven’t heard from you yet, Frau Vetter,” said the commandant. “Oh yes … yes … I was supposed to call you, that number …” I fumbled in my bag. “I wonder if I still have it …” Did I really imagine that I could convince him I had misplaced his number the way I had “lost” my Nazi Red Cross pin? “The number is on your desk,” he said with a smile. “Ah. Yes. In my office.” “No. Not that desk. The antique desk with the brass fittings and feet like the claws of a lion, the desk you have in your apartment.” In my mind’s ear, I heard the fiend Goebbels laughing.
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But I think that every time you hurt somebody you care for, a crack appears in your relationship, a little weakening - and it stays there, dangerous, waiting for the next opportunity to open up and destroy everything.
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We heard that the Americans and the British encouraged mothers to work in the war industries, that they provided child care and paid high wages to a highly motivated, patriotic workforce. But the Führer rejected this idea. German women received extra rations, even medals of honor, for breeding profusely.
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Why did I surround my daughter with these pleasant, soothing lies? Because I wanted her not to feel alone. Just as Mama had always sent me the things she did not have-the cake when she was hungry, the gloves when she was cold-I tried to give Angela the things that I had lost: a family, a secure place in the world, a normal life.
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It was the individuals who made their own rules in this situation. No one forced them to behave in an unkind manner. The opportunity to act decently toward us was always available to them. Only the tiniest number of them ever used it.
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Cowardly thoughts, anxious hesitation, Womanish timidity, timorous complaints Won’t keep misery away from you And will not set you free.
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How can a gang of pompous little men so quickly destroy the democratic institutions of a great country?!” cried Wolfgang, pounding on the table in frustration, making the chess pieces topple.
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He disliked wearing his uniform and always changed out of it right away when he came home. Symbols of authority irritated him—unless the authority was his own.
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My father's decision to let me go to high school had a monumental on my life, because for the first time I had friends who were boys. It had nothing to do with sex, I assure you....No, it was about intellectual development. You see, in those days, boys were simply better educated than girls. The read more, traveled more, thought more. So now, for the first time, I began to have friends with whom I could really talk....
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The soul withdrew to a rational silence. The body remained there in the madness.
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The farmers had grown proud and haughty. They ate better than anyone else in Germany now. And, like Volkswagen and Siemens, they had slaves. All they had to do was feed the local Nazi power elite, and they could have all the slaves they wanted.
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The high-strung Frieda made the mistake of telling Frau Fleschner that she had a toothache. She was taken to a dentist. He pulled ten of her teeth! After one day, they put her back in the fields, spitting blood. She was twenty-one years old.
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Life is beautiful, and it begins tomorrow.
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They wanted to know, you see. They were afraid that with our typical Austrian faces, we might be able to pass. They didn’t want to be fooled. Even then, in the 1920s, they wanted to be able to tell who was a Jew.
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Something always happened, you see. A Yiddish song on Hanukkah, a British rabbi's prayer on the radio, some kindness on a train or in the street that reminded me, no matter how far I retreated, no matter how deep into self-denial my fear drove me, that the Jews would always be my people and I would always belong to them.
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Often, the teachers would ask me what language we spoke at home. This was a not-so-subtle way of discovering if we spoke Yiddish which we didn’t and were therefore Jewish which we were.
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Man is a greater thing than you have thought him.
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When Frieda, Trude, Lucy, and I walked to work, the German children hooted at us: “Jewish swine!” In town, the shopkeepers would not even sell us a beer. I wrote to Mama that Osterburg was a friendly town.