Prison Camp Quotes

“To outsmart you they thought up work squads—but not squads like the ones outside the camps, where everyone is paid his separate wage. Everything was so arranged in the camp that the prisoners egged one another on. It was like this: either you all got a bit extra or you all croaked. You're loafing you bastard—do you think I'm willing to go hungry just because of you? Put your guts into it, slob.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

“Can any work in a prison camp merge with your dreams, absorb your whole soul, rob you of sleep? It can—but only the work you do to escape!”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books V-VII

“...He could strike down the prisoners and he could stamp on the may-beetles, but what he was aiming at was out of reach and could not be killed.
At last he understood.
He had undertaken the task which no army, no police force, no militia, no party, no organization could successfully carry out. It would have been necessary to kill all human beings down to the very last, and even then it was possible, yes, it was probable that their imperishable spirit would remain behind them like a smile of heaven over the face of earth.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“A situation like Weihsien is fertile soil for producing people of exceptional character. In our eyes, for instance, our teachers were heroes in the way they absorbed the hardships and fears themselves and tried to make life as normal as possible for us.”
― David Michell, A Boy's War

“I think at times all of us in camp considered ourselves as heroes. We were surviving, some would say even thriving, in the midst of war. By dint of hard work, ingenuity, faith, prayer and perseverance we had transformed a compound that was a hopeless mess into a habitable and in some rare corners, almost an attractive living place.”
― David Michell

“Weihsien—the test—whether a man’s happiness depends on what he has or what he is; on outer circumstances or inner heart; on life’s experiences—good or bad—or on what he makes out of the materials those experiences provide. Hugh Hubbard on Eric Liddell”
― David Michell, A Boy's War