- I shall remember the look in Margot's eyes all my life.
- I hope Anne's book will have an effect on the rest of your life so that insofar as it is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace.
- We cannot change what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is to learn from the past and to realize what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means. I believe that it's everyone's responsibility to fight prejudice.
- To build up a future, you have to know the past.
- Most parents don't know really their children.
- There are no walls, no bolts, no locks that anyone ca nput on your mind.
- For me, it was a revelation. There, was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.
- When you write in such a profound manner and share your thoughts and innermost feelings, the impact on the world can be robust.
- It was about half past ten. I was upstairs in the van Pels's part of the house, in Peter's room, doing schoolwork with him. Suddenly someone came running up the stairs. Then the door flew open and a man stood before us holding his pistol aimed at my chest. Downstairs all the others were already assembled. My wife and the children and the van Pels family were standing there with raised hands. Then Fritz Pfeffer came in, followed by another stranger. The policemen ordered us to hand over our valuables. Silberbauer took Anne's briefcase. He shook everything out, dumping the contents on the floor, so that Anne's papers and notebooks and loose sheets lay scattered all over the floorboards.'
- "Of course, all of us had to work in the camp, but in the evenings we were free and we could be together. For the children especially, there was a certain relief; to no longer be cooped up and to be able to talk to other people. However, we adults feared being deported to the notorious camps in Poland.".
- I think it is not only important that people go to the Anne Frank House to see the secret annex, but also that they are helped to realise that people are also persecuted today because of their race, religion or political convictions.
- "Every child has to raise itself.".
- "One day in Auschwitz I became so dispirited that I couldn't carry on. They had given me a beating, which wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. It was on a Sunday, and I said: 'I can't get up'. Then my comrades said: 'That's impossible, you have to get up, otherwise you're lost'. They went to a Dutch doctor, who worked with the German doctor. He came to me in the barracks and said: 'Get up and come to the hospital barracks early tomorrow morning. I'll talk to the German doctor and make sure you are admitted'. Because of that I survived.".
- 'I am now nearly ninety and my powers are slowly waning. But the duty Anne left me continues to give me new strength - to fight for reconciliation and human rights throughout the world.'.
- After my return from the concentration camp it was very difficult to start a new life without my loved ones. I was alone and stayed with the friends who had so devotedly helped us during our years in hiding. Naturally I had to go back to work (...) I felt obliged to build the business back up in order to see to the needs of my friends who worked there and who had given us so much help during our two years in hiding. In my free time I established contact with many people who had suffered the same fate that I had. Many of them were young people who had lost their parents, and I tried to help them wherever I could. This is how I met my present wife (Fritzi). We married in 1953 and moved to Basel.
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