Saturday, March 27, 2004

Finished Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz last night. Here is a great quote.
"The conviction that life has a purpose is routed in every fibre of man, it is a property of the human substance. Free men give many names to this purpose, and many think and talk about its name. But for us the question is simpler.
Today, in this place, our only puropse is to reach the spring. At the moment we care about nothing else. Behind this aim there is not at the moment any other aim. In the morning while we wait endlessly lined up in the roll-call square for the time to leave for work, while every breath of wind penetrates our clothes and runs in violent shivers over ouor defenceless bodies, and everything is grey around us, and we are grey; in the morning, when it is still dark, we all look at the sky in the east to spot the first signs of a milder season, and the rising of the sun is commented on every day: today a little earlier than yesterday, today a little warmer than yesterday, in two months, in a month, the cold will call a truce and we will have one enemy less."

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