Walter Morgenbesser

“ ‘Come on, take the boots from that German!’ He opened him up (killed him) completely. I told him: ‘Thank you, my clogs are better, I don’t want the boots.’ He saw that I was frightened, that I didn’t want to look. He then revealed something to me: ‘Do you know who I am?’ He was a Russian major. ‘I’m the son of the head rabbi from Kiev. What I just did now, that’s what they did to my family. They murdered my whole family. I don’t use a weapon in Germany. [...] What they did to my family, I am doing here.’ ”

“There were some sixteen seventeen of us Jewish children from Slovakia there. And some seventy Gipsy children, about my age, some a bit older or younger. They were castrated.”

“ ‘Now take the revolver and shoot me.’ He had a very nice Walther Revolver. ‘Why do you want me to shoot you?’ - ‘Because I lied to you.’ - ‘In what way did you lie to me?’ - ‘Up until now you didn’t know, so I’ll tell you the truth. I’m a Jew!’ And what he replied was: ‘Jude ist kein Mensch?’ - ‘Isn’t a Jew human?’ ”

“Always, when I think back to those things, I have to cry. It is my luck that I can cry. I am not ashamed of it. It is my luck because it gives me relief.”