One Has The Impression That Something Is

The More Images I Gathered From The Past, I Said, The More Unlikely It Seemed To Me That The Past Had Actually Happened In This Or That Way, For Nothing About It Could Be Called Normal: Most Of It Was Absurd, And If Not Absurd, Then Appalling.

Only In The Books Written In Earlier Times Did She Sometimes Think She Found Some Faint Idea Of What It Might Be Like To Be Alive.

...the Darkness Does Not Lift But Becomes Yet Heavier As I Think How Little We Can Hold In Mind, How Everything Is Constantly Lapsing Into Oblivion With Every Extinguished Life, How The World Is, As It Were, Draining Itself, In That The History Of Countless Places And Objects Which Themselves Have No Power Or Memory Is Never Heard, Never Described Or Passed On.

As Far As I Know, The Question Of Whether And How It Could Be Strategically Or Morally Justified Was Never The Subject Of Open Debate In Germany After 1945, No Doubt Mainly Because A Nation Which Had Murdered And Worked To Death Millions Of People In Its Camps Could Hardly Call On The Victorious Powers To Explain The Military And Political Logic That Dictated The Destruction Of The German Cities.

And So They Are Ever Returning To Us, The Dead. At Times They Come Back From The Ice More Than Seven Decades Later And Are Found At The Edge Of The Moraine, A Few Polished Bones And A Pair Of Hobnailed Boots.