Jean Améry

“I am true only as I see and understand myself deep within; I am what I am for myself and in myself, and nothing else.”
― Jean Améry, At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities

“[F]or me, being a Jew means feeling the tragedy of yesterday as an inner oppression. On my left forearm I bear the Auschwitz number; it reads more briefly than the Pentateuch or the Talmud and yet provides more thorough information. It is also more binding than basic formulas of Jewish existence. If to myself and the world, including the religious and nationally minded Jews, who do not regard me as one of their own, I say: I am a Jew, then I mean by that those realities and possibilities that are summed up in the Auschwitz number.”
― Jean Amery, At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities