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"I was working with a man who was a survivor
[of the Holocaust]...When he was 11, they
knew in his family that the time was limited,
everyone knew that, and he was told to pack some
things because they would be leaving in a
hurry....
"So picture an 11-year old child looking around
his room, knowing his life is about to be
destroyed: what should he take? And he was frozen
in the dilemma of the choice. And so he made
himself two shoe boxes. In one shoe box he put
pictures of his family, he put some poetry he had
written, he put a postcard from a girl- his
treasures- his autobiography of things. And in the
other he put an extra pair of shoes and some
underwear and a hanky and a knife and a watch. And
I think he probably put in a toothbrush. And
he came home from school one day and he was told,
'Now! Run!' And he ran in and grabbed the shoe box.
And they left.
"When they stopped again, he looked into the
box, and he had taken the wrong one. He had the
hanky and the shoes and the toothbrush and so
on.
"And he thought, 'What did I want this box for?
What did I want the other box for? What did the
other box mean- to anybody?' And he said, 'It was
as though I was standing at the edge of the sea,
and I knew I would be pushed into the sea with my
box, and the only thing that mattered was that
I not sink with the box. It was as if I would
try to throw the box back onto shore, and maybe
somebody would catch it.'"
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