“The prisoners who saved themselves were not the best, the predestined to good, the bearers of a message: what I had seen and experienced showed the exact opposite. Survived the worst of preference, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the 'gray area', the spies. It was not a certain rule (there were, nor are there in human affairs, certain rules), but was also a rule. I felt so innocent, but trooped among the saved, and therefore constantly looking for an excuse, before me and the others. Survived the worst, that is the most suitable; the best are all dead.”

—  Primo Levi, book The Drowned and the Saved

The Drowned and the Saved (1986)

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Primo Levi44
Italian chemist, memoirist, short story writer, novelist, e… 1918–1987

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