The Half-Life of an American Essayist Book

"If the life of mind involves a series of steps involving the progressive loss of innocence, beginning with the realization that one is not the center of the universe and ending with the thought that the universe has no center, surely there is no need to accelerate a child's journey toward awareness of the programmed horror that the German military conceived for the Jews. People will come to such knowledge on their own, or they won't. I am not sure that the examined life requires the contemplation of what happened to the Jews. All I am sure of is that because those who perished had no choice about dying, we, their descendants, have no choice but to remember."