Quotes About Survival

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 a story interwoven with freezing dawns.)

he) reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror; something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving.

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.

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.

Man's capacity to dig himself in, to secrete a shell, to build around himself a tenuous barrier of defence, even in apparently desperate circumstances, is astonishing and merits a serious study.

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.

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.

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.

For living men, the units of time always have a value, which increases in ratio to the strength of the internal resources of the person living through them; but for us, hours, days, months spilled out sluggishly from the future into the past, always too slowly, a valueless and superfluous material, of which we sought to rid ourselves as soon as possible. ... For us, history had stopped.

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.

He fights for his life but still remains everybody's friend. He knows whom to corrupt, whom to avoid, whose compassion to arouse, whom to resist.

She lived with the doctor on Via Po, in a gloomy, dark apartment, barely warmed in winter by just a small Franklin stove, and she no longer threw out anything, because everything might eventually come in handy: not even the cheese rinds or the foil on chocolates, with which she made silver balls to be sent to missions to "free a little black boy.

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.

Come Rumkowski, anche noi siamo così abbagliati dal potere e dal prestigio da dimenticare la nostra fragilità essenziale: col potere veniamo a patti, volentieri o no, dimenticando che nel ghetto siamo tutti, che il ghetto è cintato, che fuori del recinto stanno i signori della morte, e che poco lontano aspetta il treno.

El gesto de uno de sus dedos podía provocar la destrucción del campo entero, aniquilar a millares de hombres; mientras la suma de todas nuestras energías y voluntades no habría bastado para prolongar ni un minuto la vida de uno solo de nosotros.

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.

S? închizi între fire de sârm? ghimpat? mii de indivizi de vârste, condiÈ›ii, origini, limbi, culturi È™i obiceiuri diferite È™i s?-i supui unui regim de via?? constant, controlabil, identic pentru toÈ›i È™i mai prejos de orice necesitate e cel mai diabolic experiment pentru a stabili ce este esenÈ›ial È™i ce este dobândit în comportamentul animalului-om în lupta pentru existen??.

ora, in condizioni patologiche non è raro che la carta, secreto aziendale, venga riassorbita in misura eccessiva, e addormenti, paralizzi, o addirittura uccida l'organismo da cui è stata essudata

Nor had many words been wasted here on teaching us to defend ourselves against acids, caustics, fires and explosions: it seemed that, following the crude morality of the institute, the work of natural selection could be counted on to choose among us those most fit for physical and professional survival.

S? distrugi omul e greu, aproape tot atât de greu cât s?-l creezi: n-a fost uÅŸor, n-a durat puÅ£in, dar voi, hitleriÅŸtii, aÅ£i reuÅŸit s-o faceÅ£i. Iat?-ne docili sub privirile voastre: din partea noastr? nu mai aveÅ£i de ce v? teme, nu vor mai fi acte de revolt?, nici cuvinte de sfidare ÅŸi nici m?car o privire de condamnare.

otro, a costa de otro; podría haber suplantado a alguien, es decir, en realidad matado a alguien. Los «salvados» de Auschwitz no eran los mejores, los predestinados al bien, los portadores de un mensaje; cuanto yo había visto y vivido me demostraba precisamente lo contrario.

La libertà, l'improbabile, impossibile libertà, così lontana da Auschwitz che solo nei sogni osavamo sperarla, era giunta[...]. Era intorno a noi, ma sotto forma di una spietata pianura deserta. Ci aspettavano altre prove, altre fatiche, altre fami, altri geli, altre paure.