Everybody is somebody's Jew.

At that time I had not yet been taught the doctrine I was later to learn so hurriedly in the Lager: that man is bound to pursue his own ends by all possible means, while he who errs but once pays dearly

The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.

There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.

I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.

The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.

Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.