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Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.

Primo Levi

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
PRIMO LEVI

Can Dead Demand Live More Wait
But they do not battle: they are bound together by a strong alliance, by the common faith “in the validity of Maxwell’s or Boltzmann’s equations,” and by the common acceptance of Darwinism and the molecular structure of DNA.
PRIMO LEVI

Acceptance Battle Common DNA Faith Molecular Strong Structure Together Validity
Everybody is somebody’s Jew.
PRIMO LEVI

Everybody Jew Somebody
The origins of chemistry were ignoble, or at least equivocal: the dens of the alchemists, their abominable hodgepodge of ideas and language, their confessed interest in gold, their Levantine swindles typical of charlatans and magicians; instead.
PRIMO LEVI

Abominable Alchemist Chemistry Hodgepodge Idea Ignorable Instead Interest Language Least Magician Organ Swindles Wuiivocal
The aims of life are the best defense against death.
PRIMO LEVI

Against Aim Best Death Defense Life
The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.
PRIMO LEVI

Carve Change Erased Incorporation Increase Moemeory Often Stone Tend Year
Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous.
PRIMO LEVI

Dangerous Exist Few Monster Number Too Truly
Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust.
PRIMO LEVI

Centaur Divine Dust Flesh Inspirational Man Mind
Perhaps Kafka laughed when he told stories [. . . ] because one isn’t always equal to oneself.
PRIMO LEVI

Always Country Equal Oneself People Perhaps Person Story Told
Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument.
PRIMO LEVI

Fallacious Human Instrument Marvelous Memory
An enemy who sees the error of his ways ceases to be an enemy.
PRIMO LEVI

Cease Enemy Error See Way
Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable.
PRIMO LEVI

Detestable Everybody Fascism Forbid Immature Same Virtue
They sensed that what had happened around them and in their presence, and in them, was irrevocable.
PRIMO LEVI

Around Happen Inevocable Presence Sense Them
We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless.
PRIMO LEVI

Bottom Luck never Prevarication Return Seen Skill Touch Wordless
Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization.
PRIMO LEVI

Bear Civilization Even One Ourselves Place Skeleton Story Survive Tell Therefore Want Witness
Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.
PRIMO LEVI

Abdication Authority Colossal Cowardice Everything Human Itself Mask Obtuse Outside Rejection Root Solidarity Suffer Sweep

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.

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Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify.

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