Man's Search for Meaning

p.4~5

All that mattered was that one's own name and that of one's friend were crossed off the list of victims, though everyone knew that for each man saved another victim had to be found.

 

A definite number of prisoners had to gowith each transport. It did not really matter which, since each of them was nothing but a number.

 

p.5

To return to the convoy about to depart. There was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues.

 

p.5

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of sfrom camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves.

 

p.10

In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as "delusion of reprieve." The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last time. We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad.

 

p.11

There was another group of prisoners who got liquor supplied in almost unlimited quantities by the SS: these were the men who were employed in the gas chambers and crematoriums, and who knew very well that one day they would be relieved by a new shift of men, and that they would have to leave their enforced role of executioner and become victims themselves.

 

p.13

"Where?" A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke.

 

"That's where your friend is, floating up to Heaven," was the answer. But I still did not understand the truth was explained to me in plain words.