The Drowned and the Saved Quotes

“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Logic and morality made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral reality; they engendered a rejection of reality which as a rule led the cultivated man rapidly to despair. But the varieties of the man-animal are innumerable, and I saw and have described men of refined culture, especially if young, throw all this overboard, simplify and barbarize themselves, and survive. A simple man, accustomed not to ask questions of himself, was beyond the reach of the useless torment of asking himself why.

The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate… they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt… the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Compassion and brutality can coexist in the same individual and in the same moment...”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“If we had to and were able to suffer the sufferings of everyone, we could not live.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“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”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Se comprendere è impossibile, conoscere è necessario, perché ciò che è accaduto, può ritornare, le coscienze possono nuovamente essere sedotte e oscurate: anche le nostre.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“The institution represented an attempt to shift onto others — specifically, the victims — the burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of even the solace of innocence.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Are today's fears more or less founded than the fears of that time? When it comes to the future, we are just as blind as our fathers. Swiss and Swedes have their anti-nuclear shelters, but what will they find when they come out into the open? There are Polynesia, New Zealand, Tierra del Fuego, the Antarctic: perhaps they will remain unharmed. Obtaining a passport and entry visa is much easier than it was then, so why aren't we going? Why aren't 'we leaving our country? Why aren't we leaving "before"?”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Suicide is an act of man and not of the animal.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to becomeerased as the years go by, but often they change, or even grow, by incorporating extraneous features. Judges know this very well: almost never do two eyewitnesses of the same event describe it in the same way and with the same words, even if the event is recent and if neither of them has a personal interest in distorting it.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Neither Nietzsche nor Hitler no Rosenberg were mad when they intoxicated themselves and their followers by preaching the myth of the Superman to whom everything is permitted in recognition of his dogmatic and congenital superiority, but worthy of meditation is the fact that all of them, teachers and pupils, became progressively removed from reality as little by little their morality came unglued from the morality common to all times and all civilizations, an integral part of our human heritage which in the end must be acknowledged.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Every human being possesses a reserve of strength whose extent is unknown to him, be it large, small, or nonexistent, and only through extreme adversity can we evaluate it. Even apart from the extreme case of the Special Squads, often those of us who have returned, when we describe our vicissitudes, hear in response: 'In your place I would not have lasted for a single day'. This statement does not have a precise meaning: one is never in another’s place. Each individual is so complex that there is no point in trying to foresee his behavior, all the more so in extreme situations; nor is it possible to foresee one’s own behavior.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Siamo monadi, incapaci di messaggi reciproci, o capaci solo di messaggi monchi, falsi in partenza, fraintesi all'arrivo.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“I "salvati" del Lager non erano i migliori, i predestinati del bene, i latori di un messaggio: quanto io avevo visto e vissuto dimostrava l'esatto contrario. Sopravvivevano di preferenza i peggiori, gli egoisti, i violenti, gli insensibili, i collaboratori della "zona grigia",le spie. Non era una regola certa (non c'erano, nè ci sono nelle cose umane, regole certe), ma pure sempre una regola. Mi sentivo sì innocente, ma intruppato fra i salvati, e perciò alla ricerca permanente di una giustificazione.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if some of you survive, the world would not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed: they will say they are the exaggerations of Allied propaganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you. We will be the ones to dictate the history of the Lagers." -- SS Officer, quoted in The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Разумът, изкуството и поезията не помагат да се разгадае мястото, от което са прокудени.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“„По-реалистично е самообвинението или обвинението за недостиг на човешка солидарност. Малцина оцелели от концлагерите изпитват вина, че целенасочено са ощетили, обрали или ударили свой другар: онези, които са го направили (всичките капо, но не само те), изтласкват съответните спомени. Почти всички обаче се чувстват виновни, че не са оказали помощ. Присъствието до теб на някой по-слаб или по-непригоден, твърде стар или твърде млад другар, който ти додява с молби за помощ или просто с „наличие“ (само по себе си молба), бе типична черта на лагерния живот. Търсенето на съпричастност, блага дума, съвет или поне слушател беше постоянно и всеобщо, но рядко се увенчаваше с успех. Не стигаха времето, мястото, уединението, търпението, енергията; да не говорим, че онзи, към когото се отправяше молбата, на свой ред се намираше в състояние на нужда, на „кредит.”
― Primo Levi, Die Untergegangenen und die Geretteten

“Those who saw the famous film The Bridge on the River Kwai will remember the absurd zeal with which the English officer, prisoner of the Japanese, strives to build an audacious wooden bridge for them and is shocked when he realizes that the English sappers have mined it. So you see, love for a job well done is a deeply ambiguous virtue.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“An extreme case of the distortion of the memory of a committed guilty act is found in its suppression. Here, too, the borderline between good and bad faith can be vague; behind the "I don't know" and "I do not remember" that one hears in courtrooms there is sometimes the precise intent to lie, but at other times it is a fossilized lie, rigidified in a formula.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“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.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Знам, че убийците съществуваха, не само в Германия, и още са наоколо, на работа или в „заслужен отдих“, и че да ги бъркаш с техните жертви е морална болест, естетическа превземка или зловещ признак за съучастие, но най-вече ценна услуга, направена (волно или не) на отрицателите на истината.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“evacuar en público era angustioso o imposible; un trauma para el que nuestra civilización no nos prepara, una herida profunda en la dignidad humana, un atentado obsceno y lleno de malos presagios, pero también la señal de una perversidad deliberada y gratuita.”
― Primo Levi, Los hundidos y los salvados

“Целите в живота са най-добрата защита срещу смъртта - и не само в концлагера.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Жив съм и искам да ви разбера, за да ви съдя.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

“Si può credersi o dichiararsi angosciati per un motivo, ed esserlo per tutt'altro: credere di soffrire davanti al futuro, e soffrire invece per il proprio passato; credere di soffrire per gli altri, per pietà, per com-passione, e soffrire invece per motivi nostri, più o meno profondi, o meno confessabili e confessati; talvolta cosi profondi che solo lo specialista, l'analista delle anime, li sa disseppellire.”
― Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved