Sublime

If This Is a Man and The Truce (often combined into one volume) by Primo Levi

Primo Levi, who wrote about his survival at Auschwitz, described Elias, a dwarf who was interned in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He was enormously strong, bestial, and quite insane, and with those qualities he not only navigated the Auschwitz system, where so many died all around him, but actually thrived. He ate, stole, an

«Continuo a non morire» La mia amica Ruth Zylberman mi manda due brevi lettere scritte da un bambino di otto anni alla nonna durante le purghe del 1936 in Unione Sovietica. Ecco la prima: «Cara babuška, non sono ancora morto. Sei la sola persona che mi resta al mondo e io sono la sola che resta a te. Se non muoio, quando sarò grande e tu sarai molt

The prisoner passed from the first to the second phase; the phase of relative apathy, in which he achieved a kind of emotional death.

The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the gas chambers lost their horrors for him after the first few days—after all, they spared him the act of committing suicide.