Ruins in example sentence
It was a crime, she said, without trace (no written orders; no official directive, ever, anywhere); without graves (her father, brother, and mother became smoke and ash, with no marker but her own memory and, later, her autobiography); without ruins (Auschwitz, when she returns to it years later, is becalmed, neutralized, cleansed); without exit (Sarajevans, Rwandans, and Cambodians could, at least in theory, flee, whereas the hallmark of the Holocaust is that the world itself was a trap); and, finally, without reason (given the choice of expediting a troop train headed for the front or a train carrying Jews to the ovens, the Nazis always chose the latter).