Nackt unter Wölfen Quotes

“Here. Here I am.
You've taken everything from us, but not who we are! We still exist! One day grass will grow here and overgrow the ruins. Or day this will be forgotten. But you... No one will ever forget you! The shame of humanity.”
― Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen

“Ask me no questions," answered Köhn, "and I'll tell you no lies.”
― Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen

“But death was kind. Long ago it had laid its merciful hand on the heart that was once so blithe. . .”
― Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen

“And that's how it is: Death in the camp was your consort. Death outside the barbed wire is your enemy!”
― Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen

“Where was Rose? Had something happened meanwhile? Pippig felt his consciousness dimming again, as if he were looking through a rain-wet pane which prevented his recognizing anything. He felt a hot and pressing fear!
"August!" The call was a horrible scream but only within Pippig, as in a vault. In reality it emerged as a tortured breath from his dry mouth.
Rose, who had been hovering on the brink of sleep, jerked up and sat stiffly on the straw sack, listening rigid with terror, not knowing whether he had heard the call or dreamed it. Then he heard his name again, as weak and dried-out as if it had crumbled into its separate letters. In one jump Rose was at Pippig's side. Pippig felt life there and attempted to penetrate the blur before his eyes. He could not. Pippig uttered no other sound. Was it the blood that was racing through him or the wild beating in his breast? His breath flickered.”
― Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen

“Marian!" Höfel called after him. "Where are you running to?"
But the vortex had already swallowed him up.
Kropinski raised the crying bundle over his head so that it should not be crushed in the irrepressible torrent.
The child bobbed like a nutshell above the surging heads.
It twirled in the eddy through the narrows of the gate. The current swept it along on its liberated billows, which were no longer to be restrained.”
― Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen

“Förste was still sitting in his cell in the same place. He dared not move from the spot. There was no way out for him any more, and no rescue. With deep sadness in his heart he had to admit that the years of existing like a ghost in the bunker had not hardened him and that he was anything but a fighter. Yet he still had one satisfaction: he had remained a decent person, and with modest joy he thought of the good he had done for Höfel and Kropinski, who were now going to die with him. In his death he would become one of the great host that was without name or number, humus soil out of which some day a finer world would flower. Perhaps there was the meaning he was looking for. When the camp gate was blown up, that soul would already have claimed him. . . .”
― Bruno Apitz, Nackt unter Wölfen