What scene has stayed with you?

For me it's a scene from War and Remembrance, by Herman Wouk. Aaron Jastrow and his niece Natalie have been deported from the ghetto at Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. She passes the selection. He does not.

He and the other prominente are hustled after the other people who did not pass the selection, and Aaron finally realizes his fate. Wouk doesn't linger over the final moments of his life in the gas chamber–if anything, he underwrites it a little. But it's incredibly moving and haunting, especially when you think of how many millions of people suffered the same fate.

I spent much time reading The Winds of War thoroughly exasperated with these two–Aaron's lack of concern about the issues with his citizenship papers, he and Natalie's contempt for their friends who fled 1938 Italy, their unwillingness to listen to advice from diplomats to just get out of Europe. But after reading this scene, I just felt incredibly sorry for him–and more able to understand why people have trouble believing that bad things can happen to them.