The personages in these pages are not men. Their humanity is buried, or they themselves buried it, under the abuse received or inflicted on someone else. The evil and stupid SS men, the Kaps, the political, the criminals, the Prominents great and small, down to the indistinguishable Häftlinge slaves—all the grades of the mad hierarchy created by the Germans are paradoxically united in a common inner desolation.
But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world or negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.
