Josef Landau Quotes

“It all came flooding back to him now—swaying and humming along with the prayers, craning his neck to see the Torah when it was taken out of the ark and hoping to get a chance to touch it and then kiss his fingers as the scroll came around in a procession. Josef felt his skin tingle. The Nazis had taken all this from them, from him, and now he and the passengers on the ship were taking it back.”

“What is he thinking? Josef wondered. What happened to him at Dachau that he’s now a ghost of the man he once was? ‘At least he didn’t have to be buried in the hell of the Third Reich,’ his father said.”

″‘I wish from the bottom of my heart that you will land soon, Little Man,’ Officer Padron said again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.’ Josef looked deep into Officer Padron’s eyes, searching for some sign of help, some hint of sympathy. Officer Padron just looked away.”

″‘Don’t be so quick to grow up boy,’ the Brownshirt told Josef. ‘We’ll come for you soon enough.‘”

“I don’t remember much about him, but I do remember he always wanted to be a grown-up. ‘I don’t have time for games,’ he would tell me. ‘I’m a man now.’ And when those soldiers said one of us could go free and the other would be taken to a concentration camp, Josef said, ‘Take me.’ My brother, just a boy, becoming a man at last.”