Survival in Auschwitz

by Primo Levi

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.

Among the forty-five people in my wagon only four saw their homes again; and it was by far the most fortunate wagon.

Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man.

It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term “extermination camp,” and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: “to lie on the bottom.”