Dawn Came On Us Like A Betrayer;

Is Anything Sadder Than A Trainthat Leaves When It's Supposed To,that Has Only One Voice,only One Route?there's Nothing Sadder.except Perhaps A Cart Horse,shut Between Two Shaftsand Unable Even To Look Sideways.

It Is This Refrain That We Hear Repeated By Everyone: You Are Not At Home, This Is Not A Sanatorium, The Only Exit Is By Way Of The Chimney. (what Did It Mean? Soon We Were All To Learn What It Meant.)

Perhaps One Cannot, What Is More One Must Not, Understand What Happened, Because To Understand [the Holocaust] Is Almost To Justify...no Normal Human Being Will Ever Be Able To Identify With Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, And Endless Others. This Dismays Us, And At The Same Time Gives Us A Sense Of Relief, Because Perhaps It Is Desirable That Their Words (and Also, Unfortunately, Their Deeds) Cannot Be Comprehensible To Us. They Are Non-human Words And Deeds, Really Counter-human.

Nothing Can Be Said: Nothing Sure, Nothing Probable, Nothing Honest. Better To Err Through Omission Than Through Commission: Better To Refrain From Steering The Fate Of Others, Since It Is Already So Difficult To Navigate One's Own.

But Many, Many Stories Were Told; From What Could Be Gathered, All Fifty Of The Mine's Inhabitants Had Reacted On Each Other, Two By Two, As In Combinatorial Analysis, That Is To Say, Everyone With All The Others, And Especially Every Man With All The Women, Old Maids Or Married, And Every Woman With All The Men. All I Had To Do Was To Select Two Names At Random, Better If Different Sex, And Ask A Third Person, "what Happened With Those Two?" And Lo And Behold, A Splendid Story Was Unfolded For Me, Since Everyone Knew The Story Of Everyone Else.