Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.” by Primo Levi in Drowned.
This is hell. Today, in our times, hell must be like this. A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen.
We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.
There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.
Each of us bears the imprint of a friend met along the way; In each the trace of each.
Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.
Everybody is somebody’s Jew. And today the Palestinians are the Jews of the Israelis.
The aims of life are the best defense against death.
Perfection belongs to narrated events, not to those we live.
A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.
If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?
Dawn came on us like a betrayer; it seemed as though the new sun rose as an ally of our enemies to assist in our destruction.
Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don’t know it and feel safe.
The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows and occasionally the chance to feel strong.
I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.
There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.
In history and in life one sometimes seems to glimpse a ferocious law which states: to he that has, will be given; from he that has not, will be taken away.
Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.
Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.
To give a name to a thing is as gratifying as giving a name to an island, but it is also dangerous: the danger consists in one’s becoming convinced that all is taken care of and that once named, the phenomenon has also been explained.