Quotes About Survival

The Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech Delivered by

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us.

Special units would then disinter the corpses and burn them. Thus, for the first time in history, Jews were not only killed twice but denied burial in a cemetery.

Or was it simply to preserve a record of the ordeal I endured as an adolescent, at an age when one's knowledge of death and evil should be limited to what one discovers in literature?

A novel about Auschwitz is not a novel—or else it is not about Auschwitz.

For us, this was the true equality: Nakedness. Shivering with the cold.

Was it she who saved me from the silent death that characterizes resignation to solitude?

There are those who tell me that I survived in order to write this text. I am not convinced. I don't know how I survived; I was weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself. A miracle? Certainly not. If heaven could or would perform a miracle for me, why not for others more deserving than myself? It was nothing more than chance. However, having survived, I needed to give some meaning to my survival.

Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!" the Hungarian police were screaming. That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death. They

No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us.

Never shall I forget these things, even if I'm condemned to live as long as God himself

My father, an enlightened spirit, believed in man. My grandfather, a fervent Hasid, believed in God. The one taught me to speak, the other to sing. Both loved stories. And when I tell mine, I hear their voices. Whispering from beyond the silenced storm, they are what links the survivor to their memory.

At the gate, the sign proclaimed that work meant freedom.

Auschwitz." Nobody had ever heard that name.

Ormai non mi interessavo ad altro che alla mia scodella quotidiana di zuppa, al mio pezzo di pane raffermo. Il pane, la zuppa: tutta la mia vita. Ero un corpo. Forse ancora meno: uno stomaco affamato. Soltanto lo stomaco sentiva il tempo passare.

We were the masters of nature, the masters of the world. We had transcended everything—death, fatigue, our natural needs. We were stronger than cold and hunger, stronger than the guns and the desire to die, doomed and rootless, nothing but numbers, we were the only men on earth.

The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing; we were entirely among ourselves. A

Help each other. That is the only way to survive.

One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live." They were torturing him, and he didn't see a reason to live anymore how much pain and suffrage he's going through.

We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.

Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. thats all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread.

One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

under an indifferent sky.

All things enjoy ecstatic union with nature. Life without ecstasy is not true life and not worth living. Without ecstasy, the soul becomes shriveled and perverted, the mind becomes corrupt, and the body suffers pain. Ecstatic union with nature is necessary for normal health; it is necessary for survival. And to think that plants are mere dumb creatures that do not know ecstasy is ignorance or tragic, arrogant folly.