Michael O' Shaunessey Quotes

“People talked about plenty of other stuff they weren’t supposed to, but only after a quick glance over their shoulder to make sure no one else was listening. Everybody did it so much there was even a special word for it: Deutscherblick. The ‘German Look.’ You did the German Look right before you said Germany might be losing the war, or complained about the food rations, or told a joke about Hitler. Because someone was always listening, always waiting to turn you in to the Nazi secret police. Always ready to rat you out to prove how loyal they were, even if they had said the very same thing yesterday.”

“I hated pretending to like these people, hated pretending to agree with their awful hatred of the Jews, hated pretending I wanted them to win the war and conquer the world. But I smiled because I had to.”

“I tossed one book onto the fire at a time, slowly, so Horst wouldn’t see me standing around doing nothing. My skin crawled, as if I was consigning little bits of my soul to the fire with each book I threw in. But like smiling at a Nazi dinner party or memorizing facts about the Nazis for tests in school, it was all about the bigger mission. It was all part of the game. If it meant them letting me stick around to steal their secrets so the Allies could win the war, I’d burn every last book in Berlin.”

“It’s hard to smile when you’re having dinner with Nazis.”

“Everywhere I’d looked I’d seen faces full of smiles and laughter. But then, overnight, the party had ended. Not the Nazi Party. They had only gotten stronger. The other party- the feeling of unbounded German cheerfulness- was gone.”

“I had finally seen the horror behind the smiles, and so had the rest of the world.”