“Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie’s life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.
The query: ‘At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?’
And the answer: ‘Where was man?’”
__________
From the epilogue of Sophie’s Choice by William Styron.
Filed under: Literature Tagged: Auschwitz, concentration camp, Fiction, Holocaust, literature, Sophie's Choice, William Styron
