the-holocaust:

“There is much talk among psychiatrists—possibly too much—about so-called survivors’ guilt. It is the height of irony that the hangmen suffer no such guilt. The defendants at the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in the sixties laughed during the proceedings. Only the survivors feel somehow accused: ‘Why did I survive when so many others perished?’ But surely survivors bear no guilt for having escaped death. They had nothing to do with their own survival. Only the executioner had the power to decide who would live and who would die. The victims were told to march and they marched. They were told to halt and they halted. They were told to eat and they ate. They were even told to resign themselves to their fate, and they did that too.”

—Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea