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1 " Rispetto a quella conclusa, la sofferenza ancora aperta è timida, riservata e silenziosa. "
― Stig Dagerman , German Autumn
2 " C'è infatti in Germania una quantità di sinceri antifascisti che sono più delusi, più disorientati e più sconfitti di quanto lo siano i simpatizzanti nazisti: delusi perchè la liberazione non è stata radicale come si erano aspettai; disorientati perchè non vogliono solidarizzare con il malcontento dei tedeschi, in cui si trovano a rintracciare troppo nazismo nascosto, nè con la politica degli alleati, di cui osservano con costernazione l'indulgenza nei confronti dei vecchi nazisti; e infine sconfitti , perchè in quanto tedeschi dubitano di poter far valere la loro quota di partecipazione alla vittoria alleata, e allo stesso tempo, in quanto antinazisti, non sono altrettanto convinti di non avere alcuna responsabilità nella sconfitta tedesca. "
3 " In the autumn of 1946 the leaves were falling in Germany for the third time since Churchill’s famous speech about the falling of leaves. It was a gloomy season with rain, cold – and hunger, especially in the Ruhr and generally throughout the rest of the old Third Reich. All autumn, trains arrived in the Western Zones with refugees from the Eastern Zone. Ragged, starving and unwelcome, they crowded in dark, stinking station-bunkers or in the giant windowless bunkers that look like rectangular gasometers, looming like huge monuments to defeat in Germany’s collapsed cities. The silence and passive submission of these apparently insignificant people gave a sense of dark bitterness to that German autumn. They became significant just because they came and never stopped coming and because they came in such numbers. They became significant perhaps not in spite of their silence but because of it, for nothing can be expressed with such a charge of menace as that which is not expressed. "
4 " But where is the root of suffering? He begins talking about the happiness of suffering, about the beauty of suffering. Suffering is not dirty, suffering is not pitiable. No, suffering is great because suffering makes people great...It is impossible to convince him that suffering is something unworthy. "
5 " People demanded of those who were suffering their way through the German autumn that they should learn from their misfortune. No one thought that hunger is a very bad teacher "
6 " People demanded of those who were suffering their way through the German autumn that they should learn from their misfortune. No one thought that hi her is a very bad teacher "
