The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word.

No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die.

My students are very special. They are my source of pride, my source of joy, my source of hope. I am terribly fond of my students.

[Chinese] are a huge empire now, you'll soon be - in a few years two billion people in the world. So, you should be more compassionate, more understanding. And above all, you don't need all their trouble.

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.