The triumph of human identity and worth over the pathology of human destruction glows virtually everywhere in Levi’s writing.
Premonitions of the imminent catastrophe had condensed like a sticky dew in the houses and the streets, in cautious conversations and drowsy consciences.
Finally, and fundamentally, didn’t he, who was honest and open, smell the foul odor of Fascist truths that were polluting the sky, didn’t he find it disgraceful that a thinking man should be asked to believe without thinking? Didn’t he feel disgust for all the dogmas, all the unproved declarations, all the imperatives.
Alas for the dreamer: the moment of consciousness that accompanies the awakening is the acutest of sufferings.
It was the very discomfort, the blows, the cold, the thirst that kept us aloft in the void of bottomless despair, both during the journey and after. It was not the will to live, nor a conscious resignation; for few are the men capable of such resolution, and we were but a common sample of humanity.
Quien quema libros termina tarde o temprano por quemar hombres – Heinrich Heine.
The things I had seen and suffered were burning inside of me; I felt closer to the dead than the living, and felt guilty at being a man, because men had built Auschwitz, and Auschwitz had gulped down millions of human beings, and many of my friends, and a woman who was dear to my heart.
Ik kan niet begrijpen, niet verdragen dat men een mens beoordeelt niet naar wat hij is, maar naar de groep waar hij toevallig toe behoort.
Chi per mestiere compra o vende si riconosce facilmente: ha l’occhio vigile e il volto teso, teme la frode o la medita, e sta in guardia come un gatto all’imbrunire.
Non c’e’ ove specchiarsi, ma il nostro aspetto ci sta dinnanzi, riflesso in cento visi lividi, in cento pupazzi miserabili e sordidi. Eccoci trasformati nei fantasmi intravisti ieri sera.
Strano, in qualche modo si ha sempre l’impressione di essere fortunati, che una qualche circostanza, magari infinitesima, ci trattenga sull’orlo della disperazione e ci conceda di vivere.
If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again.
The tunes are few, a dozen, the same ones every day, morning and evening : marches to popular songs dear to every German. They lie engraved on our minds and will be the last thing in Lager that we shall forget : they are the voice of the Lager, the perceptible expression of its geometrical madness, of the resolution of others to annihilate us first as men in order to kill us more slowly afterwards.
Alas for the dreamer : the moment of consciousness that accompanies the awakening is the acutest of sufferings. But it does not often happen to us, and they are not long dreams. We are only tired beasts.
Prometheus had been foolish to bestow fire on men instead of selling it to them: he would have made money, placated Jove, and avoided all that trouble with the vulture.
There are few men who know how to go to their deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect. Few know how to remain silent and respect the silence of others.
Dissention, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you are not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, but you are not.
Survival without renunciation of any part of one’s own moral world – apart from powerful and direct interventions by fortune – was conceded only to very few superior individuals, made of the stuff of martyrs and saints.
We had felt no joy in seeing Viena undone and the Germans broken, but rather anguish. Not compassion, but a larger anguish, which was mixed up with our own misery, with the heavy threatening sensation of an irreparable and definitive evil, which was present everywhere. Nestling like gangrene in the guts of Europe and the world. The seed of future harm.
In the midst of the smoke and noise Dov shouted into his ear: “Empty the gun now. Don’t hold back. We’re fighting for three lines in the history books.
But are they not themselves stories of a new Bible?