I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.
We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.
Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.
Nothing can be said: nothing sure, nothing probable, nothing honest. Better to err through omission than through commission: better to refrain from steering the fate of others, since it is already so difficult to navigate one’s own.
We will not return No one must leave here and so carry to the world, together with the sign impressed on his skin, the evil tidings of what man’s presumption made of man in Auschwitz.
Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were learning to unravel, was poetry...
I have many times been praised for my lack of animosity towards the Germans. It’s not a philosophical virtue. It’s a habit of having my second reactions before the first.
For he who loses all often easily loses himself.
My number is 174517; we have been baptized, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.
If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one’s desk, is a source of profound satisfaction.
He could hardly read or write but his heart spoke the language of the good.
I’m a libertine, but it’s not my specialty.
If a writer is convinced that he is honest, then it is very difficult for him to be a bad writer.
An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.
The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.
At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly.
To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime.
Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often loses himself.
Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.
The sea of grief has no shores, no bottom; no one can sound its depths.