Eva Mozes Kor Quotes
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Mrs. Goldenthal's twin boys, Alex and Erno, were our age, and I discovered that they had been selected at Auschwitz for Mengele's experiments like us. Mrs. Goldenthan had stayed with them, and I found out later that she had hidden a younger child, Margarita, underneath her long skirt. She had come into the camp with the child hidden in her dress and during her entire stay there, even in the Nazi barracks where she had kept Margarita under the mattress during inspections, she and the other women had helped conceal the child.
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At Auschwitz dying was so easy. Surviving was a full time job.
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Getting even has never healed a single person.
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Forgiveness is not so much for the perpetrator, but for the victim.
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But here the stink was over-powering. It was as if you walked through it, around in it. It was everywhere and inescapable. I did not find out right away what the smell really was.
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So I am saying to you, whoever is reading this book, to remember: never ever give up. You can survive and make your dreams come true.
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I was given five injections. That evening I developed extremely high fever. I was trembling. My arms and my legs were swollen, huge size. Mengele and Dr. Konig and three other doctors came in the next morning. They looked at my fever chart, and Dr. Mengele said, laughingly, 'Too bad, she is so young. She has only two weeks to live ..'
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Uniqueness does not come from external things that people do to themselves or other things like what they wear. All the uniqueness that radiates to the world comes from how you deal with the world, your best inner strengths. It never comes from a tattoo or a designer outfit.
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In the darkness I heard a whistle, a car, or motorcycle going by. Noises of marching, moaning, vomiting, barking and crying punctuated the hush of camp - an orchestra accompanying the pervasive human misery.
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Until that moment I had stopped thinking about my family. Maybe it was due to the bread we ate each evening that supposedly contained not only sawdust but a powder called bromide that made us forget memories of home, a sedative of some kind. Whatever it was or was not, I could not feel sorry for myself, for Miriam, for anyone. I could not think of myself as a victim, or I knew I would perish. It was simple. For me, there was no room for any thought except survival.
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This place was confusing and noisy. People were yelling. There were screams. Confusion. Desperation. Barking. Orders. Crying, crying, crying. The crying of children for parents. The crying of parents for their babies. The crying of people confused and bewildered. The crying of people who saw with certainty that their nightmares had come true. All together the cries resounded with the ultimate and most unimaginable pain of human loss, emotional grief and suffering.
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Every night I had nightmares. I dreamed of rats the size of cats, dead bodies, and needles stuck into me. After we found out that the Nazi's had made soup out of Jewish fat, I dreamed that soap bars spoke to me in the voices of my parents and sisters, asking me, "Why are you washing with us?
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We ran up to them and they gave us hugs, cookies and chocolate. Being so alone, a hug meant more than anybody could imagine because that replaced the human warmth that we were starving for. We were not only starved for food, but we were starved for human kindness. And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.
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Because we were twins, we clung to each other. Because we were sisters, we depended on each other. Because we were family, we did not let go.