“Finally, the lock clicked and she tugged the secret door open. A rotten stench hit her like a fist. She drew away. The boy at her side recoiled, afraid. Sarah fell to her knees. Sarah could not speak, she could only quiver, her fingers covering her eyes, her nose, blocking out the smell.....She sank to her knees again and she screamed at the top of her lungs, she screamed, for her mother, for her father, screamed for Michel.”

“She bent her chin to her chest. She mumbled something I did not catch. It sounded like, "Shame on us all for not having stopped it.”

“She couldn't imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn't imagine why she and all these other people with her had to be treated this way. Who decided this, and what for?”

“I wanted to say sorry, I wanted to tell her I could not forget the roundup, the camp, Michel's death, and the direct train to Auschwitz that had taken her parents away forever. Sorry for what? he had retaliated, why should I, an American, feel sorry, hadn't my fellow countrymen freed France in June 1944? I had nothing to be sorry for, he laughed.I had looked at him straight in the eyes.Sorry for not knowing. Sorry for being forty-five years old and not knowing.”

“Hazel screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was a scream of delight. For the first time in her life-in her two lives-she felt absolutely unstoppable.”

“Lily closed her eyes and screamed at the top of her lungs as she made the scariest fall of her life, plunging to her certain death while clinging to her rescuer who really didn’t rescue her at all.”

“Leather cut into Usha's flesh and she screamed. She screamed for the soreness in her back, she screamed for the throbbing sensation in her soft belly, she screamed for the hope that was being lashed out of her; multiple screams for the first few lashings then whimpering as blinding pain clouded her head, numbness froze her body. Hope became hopeless. After twenty lashings even the whimpering stopped, only the nothingness of nothing remained.”