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I recount how a literary work succeeded in restoring the faith in humanity that the catastrophe of Auschwitz made me lose. Through lucid writing and an empathetic eye, Charlotte Delbo reveals the horrendous scenes she witnessed in Birkenau. The language she uses successfully conveys the sensations she experienced and creates visual images whose precision, registers, and contrasts take on a beauty that cures me of the terror and offer me a quality of emotion at the very moment when what is described makes me lose my faith in humanity. Her works recount the solidarity that enabled some to survive, and how personal culture helped people to increase their self-awareness and broaden their perspective on their fate. Her writing creates an effect that is the total opposite to that conjured up by the images of mass extermination. Delbo grants the reader space and time to read about one of the greatest tragedies of history, and underscores how crucial these two notions are for us to exist as subjects for ourselves, in society and in the world.