ABSTRACT
When considering the behaviour of the victims, the Nobel Prize-winning writer, Elie Wiesel, himself a survivor of the camps, put it thus:
Reduced to a mere number, the man in the concentration camp at the same time lost his identity and his individual destiny. He came to realise that his presence in the camp was due solely to the fact that he was part of a forgotten and condemned collectivity. It is not written: I shall live or die, but: someone-today-will vanish, or will continue to suffer; and from the point of view of the collective, it makes no difference whether that someone is I or another. Only the number, only the quota counts. Thus, the one who had been spared, above all during the selections, could not repress his first spontaneous reflex of joy. A moment, a week, or an eternity later, this joy weighted with fear and anxiety will turn into guilt. ‘I am happy to have escaped death’ becomes equivalent to admitting: ‘I am glad someone else went in my place.’ It was in order not to think about this that the prisoners so very quickly managed to forget their comrades or their relatives: those who had been selected. They forgot them quickly-trying to shut their eyes to the reproachful glances which still floated in the air around them.
