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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.

-Primo Levi

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Auschwitz Is Outside Of

Primo Levi

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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.

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Dawn Came On Us Like A Betrayer; It Seemed As Though The New Sun Rose As An Ally Of Our Enemies To Assist In Our Destruction.

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Asking Questions

In Order For The Wheel To Turn, For Life To Be Lived, Impurities Are Needed, And The Impurities Of Impurities In The Soil, Too, As Is Known, If It Is To Be Fertile. Dissension, Diversity, The Grain Of Salt And Mustard Are Needed: Fascism Does Not Want Them, Forbids Them, And That's Why You're Not A Fascist; It Wants Everybody To Be The Same, And You Are Not. But Immaculate Virtue Does Not Exist Either, Or If It Exists It Is Detestable.

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To Give A Name To A Thing Is As Gratifying As Giving A Name To An Island, But It Is Also Dangerous: The Danger Consists In One's Becoming Convinced That All Is Taken Care Of And That Once Named, The Phenomenon Has Also Been Explained.

This Is The Most Immediate Fruit Of Exile, Of Uprooting: The Prevalence Of The Unreal Over The Real. Everyone Dreamed Past And Future Dreams, Of Slavery And Redemption, Of Improbable Paradises, Of Equally Mythical And Improbable Enemies; Cosmic Enemies, Perverse And Subtle, Who Pervade Everything Like The Air.

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It Is This Refrain That We Hear Repeated By Everyone: You Are Not At Home, This Is Not A Sanatorium, The Only Exit Is By Way Of The Chimney. (what Did It Mean? Soon We Were All To Learn What It Meant.)

An Enemy Who Sees The Error Of His Ways Ceases To Be An Enemy.

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This Cell Belongs To A Brain, And It Is My Brain, The Brain Of Me Who Is Writing; And The Cell In Question, And Within It The Atom In Question, Is In Charge Of My Writing, In A Gigantic Minuscule Game Which Nobody Has Yet Described. It Is That Which At This Instant, Issuing Out Of A Labyrinthine Tangle Of Yeses And Nos, Makes My Hand Run Along A Certain Path On The Paper, Mark It With These Volutes That Are Signs: A Double Snap, Up And Down, Between Two Levels Of Energy, Guides This Hand Of Mine To Impress On The Paper This Dot, Here, This One.

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Inhumanity To Man

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They Sensed That What Had Happened Around Them And In Their Presence, And In Them, Was Irrevocable. Never Again Could It Be Cleansed; It Would Prove That Man, The Human Species - We, In Short - Had The Potential To Construct An Enormity Of Pain, And That Pain Is The Only Force Created From Nothing, Without Cost And Without Effort. It Is Enough Not To See, Not To Listen, Not To Act.

The Trade Of Chemist (fortified, In My Case, By The Experience Of Auschwitz), Teaches You To Overcome, Indeed To Ignore, Certain Revulsions That Are Neither Necessary Or Congenital: Matter Is Matter, Neither Noble Nor Vile, Infinitely Transformable, And Its Proximate Origin Is Of No Importance Whatsoever. Nitrogen Is Nitrogen, It Passes Miraculously From The Air Into Plants, From These Into Animals, And From Animals Into Us; When Its Function In Our Body Is Exhausted, We Eliminate It, But It Still Remains Nitrogen, Aseptic, Innocent.

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The Aims Of Life Are The Best Defense Against Death.

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. The Obstacles Preventing The Realization Of Both These Extreme States Are Of The Same Nature: They Derive From Our Human Condition Which Is Opposed To Everything Infinite.

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