On events after the end of World War II, Part I, Holland, p. 53
To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (2000)
Context: For several months I was incapable of feeling anything, completely inaccessible to my feelings — I did not laugh, I did not cry. The second thing was this amazing trauma, where I forgot the names of everyone I knew. That was very strange. I knew who everyone was: this was a friend from high school, this was my cousin, but I had to relearn every name. It was quite striking, that very strong reaction that I had. They have a name for it, I think: posttraumatic stress syndrome.
I don't sit here conquering great resistance to talk. It is not my way. I don't suffer the reliving of these memories with tremendous pain. It's very odd, but it's finished for me. That, of course, is never quite true. It isn't finished. I am like all of my generation; we are marked people. But I don't suffer; I can talk to you about it. Most of my family was killed. All of my father's and mother's sisters and brothers and their children, my sister and my old grandfather, they're all gone. Four out of five Jews in Holland never came back after the war — 80 percent.
Abraham Pais: Completion
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On the fate of his friend Lion Nordheim, who was executed ten days before the end of the war, and his own release at around the same time, p. 52
To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (2000)
Context: On the day we were caught, Lion and I had been talking about writing a memorandum on the fate of the Jewish war children living in hiding or among Dutch families … we were the representatives of the Zionist youth organization. … Lion who had been taking notes of the discussion, put these papers in his jacket pocket when he took a break from lunch. When the Germans caught us they discovered his notes. If those papers had been in my pocket I would have never lived to be seventy. I have led a strange life, a set of complete coincidences.
Source: To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (2000), p. 50