My Number Is 174517; We

I Too Entered The Lager As A Nonbeliever, And As A Nonbeliever I Was Liberated And Have Lived To This Day.

Auschwitz Is Outside Of Us, But It Is All Around Us, In The Air. The Plague Has Died Away, But The Infection Still Lingers And It Would Be Foolish To Deny It. Rejection Of Human Solidarity, Obtuse And Cynical Indifference To The Suffering Of Others, Abdication Of The Intellect And Of Moral Sense To The Principle Of Authority, And Above All, At The Root Of Everything, A Sweeping Tide Of Cowardice, A Colossal Cowardice Which Masks Itself As Warring Virtue, Love Of Country And Faith In An Idea.

We Who Survived The Camps Are Not True Witnesses. We Are Those Who, Through Prevarication, Skill Or Luck, Never Touched Bottom. Those Who Have, And Who Have Seen The Face Of The Gorgon, Did Not Return, Or Returned Wordless.

Today I Think That If For No Other Reason Than That An Auschwitz Existed, No One In Our Age Should Speak Of Providence.

Perfection Belongs To Narrated Events, Not To Those We Live.