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.
Real problems sooner or later are resolved; on the contrary, pseudoproblems are not.
Compassion and brutality can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment...
We the survivors are not the true witnesses. The true witnesses, those in possession of the unspeakable truth are the drowned, the dead, the disappeared.
Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we ill have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains.
Many people – many nations – can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that ‘every stranger is an enemy’. For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and does not lie at the base of a system of reason.
On the contrary, I believe it doesn’t make much sense to say that one man is worth more than another. One man can be stronger than another but less wise. Or more educated but not so brave. Or more generous but also more stupid. So his value depends on what you want from him; a man can be very good at his job, and worthless if you set him to do some other job.