OUR FIRST ACT AS FREE MEN was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That’s all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread. And even when we were no longer hungry, not one of us thought of revenge. The next day, a few of the young men ran into Weimar to bring back some potatoes and clothes—and to sleep with girls. But st

With no memories of his own, he was overcome by what the diary revealed, its simple assertion of individual humanity amid institutional chaos, of a future despite the present, of life in the face of death.