Quotes About Suffering

Today, I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.

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. What

I am persuaded that normal human beings are biologically built for an activity that is aimed toward a goal and that idleness, or aimless work (like Auschwitz's Arbeit), gives rise to suffering and to atrophy.

this is a story interwoven with freezing dawns.)

One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand.

The institution represented an attempt to shift onto others — specifically, the victims — the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.

For us, on the contrary, the Lager is not a punishment; for us, no end is foreseen and the Lager is nothing but a manner of living assigned to us, without limits of time, in the bosom of the Germanic social organism.

Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer hunger and cold; I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.

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.

Suicide is an act of man and not of the animal.

E ci dicese nell'animo, nuovo per noi, il dolore antico del popolo che non ha terra, il dolore senza speranza dell'esodo ogni secolo rinnovato.

Why does it happen? Why is the pain of every day translated so constantly into our dreams, in the ever-repeated scene of the unlistened-to story?

We travelled here in the sealed wagons; we saw our women and our children leave towards nothingness; we, transformed into slaves, have marched a hundred times backwards and forwards to our silent labors, killed in our spirit long before our anonymous death. 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.

Alas for the dreamer: the moment of consciousness that accompanies the awakening is the acutest of sufferings.

But here in the Lager there are no criminals nor madmen; no criminals because there is no moral law to contravene, no madmen because we are wholly devoid of free will, as our every action is, in time and place, the only conceivable one.

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.

Destruir l'home és difícil, gairebé tant com crear-lo: no ha estat senzill, no ha estat ràpid, però ho heu aconseguit, alemanys. Heu-nos aquí dòcils davant de les vostres mirades: per part nostra ja no heu de témer res: ni actes de revolta, ni paraules de desafiament, ni tan sols una mirada inculpatòria.

Se è vero che non c'è maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria, è altrettanto vero che rievocare un'angoscia ad animo tranquillo, seduti quieti alla scrivania, è fonte di soddisfazione profonda.

We are invincible because we are the conquered, Invulnerable because already dead; We laugh at your missiles. Sit down and bargain Until your tongues are dry. If the havoc and the shame continue We'll drown you in our putrefaction.

Vai de cel ce viseaz?: momentul conÅŸtient care însoÅ£eÅŸte trezirea este cea mai grea suferin??. Dar nu ni se întâmpl? des ÅŸi nici visele nu sunt lungi: nu suntem decât niÅŸte animale obosite.

Car la nature humaine est ainsi faite, que les peines et les souffrances éprouvées simultanément ne s'additionnent pas totalement dans notre sensibilité, mais se dissimulent les unes derrière les autres par ordre de grandeur décroissante selon les lois bien connues de la perspective.

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. What can one think about? One cannot think any more, it is like being already dead. Someone sits down on the ground. The time passes drop by drop.

Und es kam die Nacht, und man wurde gewahr, dass menschliche Augen so eine Nacht nicht hätten erleben und überleben dürfen. Alle empfanden dies: Und keiner von den Wachen, kein Italiener und kein Deutscher, traute sich mitanzusehen, was Menschen tun, die wissen, dass sie sterben müssen.

Piu' giu di cosi' non si puo' andare: condizione umana piu' misera non c'e', e non e' pensabile. Nulla piu' e' nostro: ci hanno tolto gli abiti, le scarpe, anche i capelli; se parleremo non ci ascolteranno, se ci ascoltassero non ci capirebbero. Ci toglieranno anche il nome: e se vorremmo conservarlo, dovremmo trovare in noi la forza di farlo, di fare si' che dietro al nome, qualcosa ancora di noi, di quelli che eravamo, rimanga.