I became acquainted with Nevio in the hospital at Dachau, where we shared the same room, together with others, for no more than twenty days…—Twenty days that were so important for me, like an entire lifetime… We didn't speak of much during this time, the most important things of suffering, nothing more…. Anyway, nothing about our future: Where was this future?

We were both badly wounded inside …

He with his seventeen years, even more than me: behind us the knowledge of things that we wanted to repress, but couldn't, just like we couldn't prevent them. There were all the terrible memories with all the open wounds of the soul, which no one could heal. Wounds that were deeper than the ones that afflicted our bodies…. Human being … is this the human being?…

During our stay in the hospital, he never talked to me about his poem. I first heard about it three years later, printed in his obituary, which his parents sent to me when they wrote to inform me about his death….”