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About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker feels deep guilt for surviving when others died.
In plain terms
I feel guilty that I am alive when I should have died.
What can you take from it?
Survivor guilt can be a heavy psychological burden.

Where it applies

  • Post-war reflection
  • Trauma processing

Putting it to work

  • Discussing Holocaust testimony
  • Analyzing survivor psychology

Questions to consider

  • Why do some feel guilty for surviving?
  • How does guilt impact the living?

Another view

This is a subjective feeling and may not reflect objective moral facts.

More from Franz Stangl

  1. I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always a huge mass...they were naked, packed together, running, being driven with whips.

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  2. No, no, no. This was the system. Wirth had invented it. It worked. And because it worked, it was irreversible.

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  3. Cargo. They were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of blue-blac…

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