Into That Darkness Quotes

“This may appear to be a marginal matter, but I believe it to be peculiarly significant in representing a profoundly mistaken emphasis accepted – perhaps of necessity – by the courts, and also by the public and by the individuals involved: a concept whereby responsibility has been limited to momentary and often isolated actions, and to a few individuals. It is, I think, because of this universal acceptance of a false concept of responsibility that Stangl himself (until just before he died), his family and – in a wider but equally, if not even more, important sense – countless other people in Germany and outside it, have felt for years that what is decisive in law, and therefore in the whole conduct of human affairs, is what a man does on isolated occasions rather than what he is.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“But what is important is that it is hard to see in this instance what they have to gain by denying that they had been “schooled” for murder at the euthanasia institutes, if that in fact was what happened. They would surely appear in a slightly less terrible light if they could claim that they had been scientifically conditioned – brainwashed – to death-camp work, rather than assigned to it because their natures seemed particularly suited to such activity.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“now at long last one of them is going to have the courage to explain to my generation how any human being with mind and heart and brain could … not even ‘do’ what was done – it isn’t our function to say whether a man is ‘guilty as charged’ or not – but even see it being done, and consent to remain alive.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“he had finally, however briefly, faced himself and told the truth; it was a monumental effort to reach that fleeting moment when he became the man he should have been.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“One night somebody came and said there was an SS officer lying buried down in the valley. There was shooting everywhere, but I slipped out in the night, through the woods, down to the place that had been described, and I dug and dug in the earth until I reached that corpse and I felt his face and hair. It was pitch dark, I had no light, and anyway I wouldn’t have dared light even a match. But I knew – my hands knew it wasn’t Paul. So I covered him up again and climbed back up to the little house where we were staying.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“I am responsible only to myself and my God. Only I know what I did of my own free will.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“What is the difference to you between hate, and a contempt which results in considering people as ‘cargo’?” “It has nothing to do with hate. They were so weak; they allowed everything to happen – to be done to them. They were people with whom there was no common ground, no possibility of communication – that is how contempt is born.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“Except for a monster, no man who actually participated in such events (rather than “merely” organized from far away) can concede guilt and yet, as the young prison officer in Düsseldorf put it, “consent to remain alive”.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“he had done nothing wrong; there had always been others above him; he had never done anything but obey orders; he had never hurt a single human being.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“no man’s actions can be judged in isolation from the external elements that shape and influence his life.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“Ci hanno detto che la Chiesa non sapeva niente dell'intenzione dei nazisti di istituire l'eutanasia nel 1939, anche se un teologo morale, che a quell'epoca era professore in un'università cattolica (della quale in precedenza era stato rettore) lavorò per sei mesi a un'Opinione che gli era stata commissionata ufficialmente.
Ci hanno detto che il Papa non poteva protestare contro lo sterminio degli ebrei nella Polonia occupata dai nazisti, poiché - anche se gli erano giunte voci di questi orrori - non lo sapeva con certezza. E ci hanno detto che, pur ammettendosi che dopo la disfatta tedesca importanti capi nazisti fuggirono all'estero attraverso Roma, la loro identità non era nota a coloro che li aiutavano.
Io ero pronta a farmi convincere di tutte queste affermazioni, ma su tutte quante la prova del contrario è schiacciante.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“La nostra vita quotidiana? Era in ogni senso regolata, e assai particolare. V'erano alcune cose assolutamente essenziali al fine della sopravvivenza: era essenziale riempirsi completamente della determinazione di sopravvivere; era essenziale creare in se stessi una capacità di dissociarsi in una certa misura da Treblinka; era importante non adattarsi completamente ad essa. Un completo adattamento significava accettazione. E nel momento stesso in cui uno accettava, era moralmente e fisicamente perduto.
"Naturalmente, furono molti quelli che soccombettero: ho letto praticamente tutto ciò che è stato scritto su questo argomento. Ma in qualche modo, nessuno sembra aver capito: non era la spietatezza, che permetteva all'individuo di sopravvivere, era una qualità indefinibile - non peculiare agli individui colti o raffinati. Chiunque poteva possederla. Una specie di inestinguibile sete di vita - è forse questa la migliore definizione che si possa darne - o magari, una sorta di talento per la vita, e una fede in essa...".”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“Domandai a Stan Szmajzner in che modo, secondo lui, era riuscito a sopravvivere. Che tipo di persona ha dovuto essere, per sopravvivere ai campi? Quali speciali qualità bisognava avere?
"Capisco la sua domanda" disse "Sì, anche noi eravamo corrotti, naturalmente: vivere era la prima cosa. Ricordo com'eravamo furiosi quando i trasporti provenivano dall'Est anziché dall'Ovest. Quelli che venivano dalla Germania, dall'Austria, dall'Olanda, dall'Ungheria... portavano indumenti, vestiti, e soprattutto roba da mangiare; potevamo andar là a sceglierci quello che ci piaceva. Quelli che venivano dalla Polonia o da altri posti dell'Est non avevano niente, e allora restavamo relativamente affamati. Ed è anche vero che se non ci fosse stato l'oro, noi non saremmo vissuti. E così, in un certo senso, la loro morte significava la nostra vita".”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“It was difficult to associate the quiet, courteous man the prison governor presented to me that morning, with that description.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“what we are above all other things, is individual and different.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“I have never intentionally hurt anyone, myself,” he said, with a different, less incisive emphasis, and waited again – for a long time. For the first time, in all these many days, I had given him no help. There was no more time. He gripped the table with both hands as if he was holding on to it. “But I was there,” he said then, in a curiously dry and tired tone of resignation. These few sentences had taken almost half an hour to pronounce. “So yes,”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“Was God in Treblinka?” “Yes,” he said. “Otherwise, how could it have happened?” “But isn’t God good?” “No,” he said slowly, “I wouldn’t say that. He is good and bad. But then, laws are made by men; and faith in God too depends on men – so that doesn’t prove much of anything, does it? The only thing is, there are things which are inexplicable by science, so there must be something beyond man. Tell me though, if a man has a goal he calls God, what can he do to achieve it?”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“God is everything higher which I cannot understand but only believe.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“That everything human has its origin in human weakness.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“There were idiots amongst them – morons. I often opened my mouth too wide and let them have it. ‘My God,’ I’d say to them, ‘euthanasia passed you by, didn’t it,’ and I’d tell my wife when I got home, ‘these morons got overlooked by the euthanasia.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“Amongst the deported are many Catholics. Would it not be possible that Your Holiness make another attempt to intercede for these unhappy innocents? Your intervention represents the last hope of so many and the fervent entreaty of all decent men.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“It is never permitted to deprive members of foreign races of human rights – the right to freedom, the right to property, the right to an insoluble marriage; never is it permitted to subject anyone to [such] cruelties.…”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“What do you think it did to Galen’s reputation,” replied Father Schneider, “when the Allies dropped copies of his sermon together with their bombs?”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“On June 22, 1938 (this would have been just two months after virtually publicly rebuking Cardinal Innitzer for welcoming the Nazis into Austria),”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“It cannot, however, be questioned that escapers such as Stangl (and for that matter Eichmann, certainly a “bigger fish” administratively if not morally) did in the final analysis receive important assistance from two organizations which – to put it very mildly – allowed themselves to be grievously misused in aiding the escapes of individuals so dreadfully implicated: the International Red Cross, and the Vatican.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“Stangl had the name wrong. He meant Bishop Aloïs Hudal, Rector of the Santa Maria del Anima, and priest-confessor to the German Catholic community in Rome (who died there in 1963).”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“I heard of a Bishop Hulda at the Vatican in Rome who was helping Catholic SS officers, so that’s where we went.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“I have spent a great deal of time seeking documentary evidence which would support or contradict the Stangls’ story of how they, and others like them, escaped from Europe; and the real facts, it turns out, are neither dramatic nor unequivocal; they are complex, ambiguous and merely prove again that in the final analysis, history is not made by organizations, but by individual men, with individual failings, and individual responsibilities”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“To the demoralization of the displaced persons was added with the passing of time the “amoralization” of the occupation personnel, whose black-market activities in cigarettes, medical supplies, food and transport were soon nothing short of staggering”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

“on the whole the US personnel soon felt considerably more sympathy for the Germans than for their victims.”
― Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience