"A great tidal wave of men came rolling onward and would have crushed me like an ant."

"He looked us over as if we were a pack of leprous dogs hanging onto our lives."

"It was not the first time a false prophet had foretold us -peace-on-earth, negotiations-with-the-Red-Cross-for-our-release, or other false rumors...And we often believed them. It was an injection of morphine."

"The doors were nailed up; the way back was finally cut off. The world was a cattle wagon hermetically sealed."

"Men through themselves on top of each other, stamping on each other, tearing at each other, biting each other. With beasts of prey, with animal hatred in their eyes; an extraordinary vitality had seized them, sharpening their teeth and nails."

"In a moment of ultimate lucidity it seemed to me that we were damned souls wandering in the half-world, souls condemned to wander through space til the generations of man came to an end..."

"The march began. The dead stayed in the yard under the snow, like faithful guards assassinated, without burial."

"His (the Rabbi's) mere presence among the deportees added a touch of unreality to the scene. It was like a page torn from a story book, from some historical novel about the captivity of Babylon or the Spanish Inquisition."

"Thousands of voices repeated the benediction; thousands of men prostrated themselves like trees before a tempest."