Když Tvůj přítel padne, nemáš se radovat, ale ani mu nemáš pomoct vstát. - Primo Levi

"She had asked the older women: "What is that fire?" And they had replied: "It is we who are burning.

Liquids require receptacles. This is the great problem of packaging, which every experienced chemist knows: and it was well known to God Almighty, who solved it brilliantly, as he is wont to, with cellular membranes- eggshells, the multiple peel of oranges, and our own skin, because after all we too are liquids. Now, at that time, there did not exist polyethylene, which would have suited me perfectly since it is flexible, light, and splendidly impermeable: but it is also a bit too incorruptible, and not by chance God Almighty himself, although he is a master of polymerization, abstained from patenting it: He does not like incorruptible things.

The trade of chemist (fortified, in my case, by the experience of Auschwitz), teaches you to overcome, indeed to ignore, certain revulsions that are neither necessary or congenital: matter is matter, neither noble nor vile, infinitely transformable, and its proximate origin is of no importance whatsoever. Nitrogen is nitrogen, it passes miraculously from the air into plants, from these into animals, and from animals into us; when its function in our body is exhausted, we eliminate it, but it still remains nitrogen, aseptic, innocent.