concentration-camp

I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.

For a moment David was tempted to think that perhaps there were no good people at all outside concentration camps, but then he reminded himself of the sailor and Angelo and the English people who might have been ignorant but were certainly not bad.

It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end.

It's not unreal to me yet, though it might get that way soon. It still feels very real. And not even horrible -- the dead are just the dead. I am convinced that the living people they once were would have been proud of their protective bodies hoodwinking their murderers to save someone else. [..] But it's not civilized. There is something indecent about it -- really foully indecent. The civilized Rose-person in me, who still seems to exist beneath the layers of filth, knows this. [..] I have become so indifferent about the dead.