And then there's a story told from the opposite perspective. Arkin was acting in a movie that was the true story of an escape from a Holocaust camp, Sobibor. They had some survivors flown to the set. One was Esther Raab. He was taken with her cheerfulness. Arkin writes:

"I found the courage to get a bit more personal with her and I asked her if she'd always been so happy, so comfortable and positive. She said yes. "Always?" I asked gingerly. "Always," she said. "Even in the camp?" "Yes," she said. "Even in light of what was taking place around you? The torture, the murders? The murders of your own family?" "Yes," she said. How could this be? I asked. She paused for a moment and said. "I have a deep belief in the Almighty. I think he knows what he's doing."

It was hard for me to believe this degree of steadfastness and belief, and I went on.

"Did your belief ever flag?" I asked.

"No," she said.

I had a hard time believing what I was hearing. "In light of what you were witness to on a daily basis for years, your belief never flagged?"

"No."

"Not for a moment? Not for a single moment?"

"No."

"You never doubted for a moment."

"Not for a moment," she said. Then she added softly, "I couldn't." [emphasis in original]

She sat there quietly, smiling slightly, and the hair went up on the back of my neck. It was an easy reply, but un- derneath was steel. It spoke to an almost effortless, solid, indomitable trust and belief in the rightness of things unseed that was unshakeable. I don't remember ever having encountered that degree of belief before. I felt as if I'd been jolted with a cattle prod.

In these two words, so carefully stated, she was telling me that she either believed or knew that there was more to the world, to the universe, to her consciousness than she was at that time being allowed to see or experience and that if she had dropped that sense, that wisdom, for even one second in the nightmare life in which she had been placed, her entire being would have dropped into a sinkhole of terror, despair, and meaninglessness and she would never, ever have come out of it again. She had been through the fire and had come out intact. It was an extraordinary lesson for me."

Then there's the dream she had the night before the escape. In the dream she saw three distinct houses. The first night she and the few escapees she found herself grouped with, came across one of the houses and they were given food and shelter. Second night, second house and again, food and shelter. Third night, third house, which was abandoned. They sought shelter in the barn. In the barn, a man emerged that had been sleeping in the hay........It was her brother, who had been arrested the same day as her and she had assumed had been killed.

I got teary and started shaking typing this story here. This story I typed myself rather than copy-pasting from the book.