It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

Just as there are predatory birds, so there are predatory ideas: I came under their spell. . . .Just as the survivors say that no one will ever understand the victims, what I must tell you is that you will never understand the executioners.

I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.

It's not a weapon, [governments] don't kill, they don't conduct massacres, although massacres have been committed and many people were killed, but they stifle religion, they're afraid probably.

Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations.

What [Franz] Kafka says about the Tower of Babel: In the beginning there were actually many languages, and then as a punishment God gave the world a single language. And then they stopped understanding each other.

As you know, I describe Shirat ha-Yam as part of an epic story that has qualities of history and which also has qualities of the mythological, of an epic.