He main retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevsky said once, 'There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings'.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a man can aspire.

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of human is through love and in love.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for the brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words,"The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.

While this has never been the mainstream view in Germany, there are still political groups there today who refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust on the grounds that what Germans in eastern Europe suffered was 'exactly the same'. This is an extremely dangerous point of view. While it is true that the Polish labour camps contained some repugnant examples of extreme sadism towards Germans, there is absolutely no evidence to show that this was part of an official policy of extermination.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.