It all belonged to everyone since it no longer belonged to anyone.
In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous. We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been...
In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic...
I learned that man lives differently, depending on whether he is in a horizontal or vertical position. The shadows on the walls, on the faces, are not the same.
I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.
His breathing was labored. His eyes were closed. But I was convinced that he was seeing everything. That he was seeing the truth in all things.
For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living.
For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.
Even if I wrote on nothing else, it would never be enough, even if all the survivors did nothing but write about their experiences, it would still not be enough.*Response when asked how much longer is...
Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?
Friendship marks a life even more deeply rhan love. Love risks degenerating into obsession friendship is never anything but sharing.
[The shock of finding a familiar word in an unfamiliar setting.] A SS man would examine us. Whenever he found a weak one, a musulman as we called them, he would write his number down: good for the cre...
You shouldn’t act as a spokesperson for someone who’s trying to impose his will on you.
Then he smiled. I shall always remember that smile. What world did it come from? Heavy snow continued to fall over the corpses.
The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...
Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.
Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he...
Never again becomes more than a slogan: It's a prayer, a promise, a vow. There will never again be hatred, people say. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or th...
In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone.
His eyes would suddenly go blank, leaving two gaping wounds, two wells of terror.