We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings. We left our relatives in the Polish ghettoes and our best friends have been killed in concentration camps, and that means the rupture of our private lives.
~ Hannah Arendt, in We Refugees
Oh yes, I know how true this is when I think about my dad. His last words were in German, even though he hadn't spoken it much for almost 50 years & claimed he didn't know it anymore.