"I have always been a very optimistic person...I would always say in the forest: 'we are all going to survive.'"

"I always told my children as my father told me, to be a proud Jew, stand up for Jewish causes, and don't let anyone get away with belittling you that you are scum of the earth. And if you can do that, you will have a happy life."

"When I got to Heidelberg I could literally hear the glass shattering...I heard the shattering, I heard the shouting, 'kill the Jew' and all that. Someone (a Jewish  man) met me and said 'don't come out, try to get home with the next train,' all the while listening to all that." 

"The shooting began immediately and without discrimination. My father went to the basement of their house and watched the carnage through the window, while the rest of my family, my mother, three brothers and baby sister, huddled in what seemed to be the safety of our house...My boyhood ended on that black day of June 28, 1941 with the roar of the trucks. I was eleven years old."

"If you are a survivor, at some point, you are going to have to ask yourself, 'why did I survive?' And that puts a sort of burden to accomplish something with your life because you've got to, number one, deserved to have survived and number two, live life for those who didn't."

"When you see bad things happen in the world, step up and do something. Even if the thing is small. We all have to work to make this world a better place."

Ernest "Bumi" Gelb

“I made my way back to my home which was now occupied by neighbors. I found my father and my sister Libu. My dear mother and two younger sisters and more than 100 relatives had perished.”