In The Drowned and Saved why according to Levi, did essentially all survivors feel depression, shame, and guilt after their release?

Paradoxically, shame and/or guilt—a vague anguish whose source cannot be pinpointed, afflicts the victims of the Lager rather than their tormentors, who tend to fabricate a "convenient reality" of invented memories as a substitute for the repugnant horrors in which they have participated. Alcohol and euphemisms are used during their service to ease their consciences. After the war, each telling of their story seems truer and is more readily believed. When guilt is suppressed by claiming "I don't remember," it is often a formulaic "fossilized lie." German civilians learn not to see, hoping that this spares them complicity.

The victims' memories also are filtered, but with no intention to deceive. They skim over painful episodes and dwell on moments of respite. Discomfort over re-acquired freedom is different for each, but all feel diminished by having lived at an animal level, having stolen, forgotten country, culture, family, past, and planned future. The "saved," whose lot it becomes to bear witness to what they have lived through, then to be the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the "gray zone" and the spies. This creates survivor guilt.

Nazi regimens, intended to maximize the "collective agony" of the Lagers, pinpoint those activities that cause the most shame: nudity, relieving oneself in public, and for Orthodox Jews tattooing, which violates the Mosaic Law. The daily rhythm of the Lager is a continual "offense to modesty." The extreme case of collaboration is the Sonderkommandos (SK), who do the dirty work. Combining pragmatism and psychology—and shifting guilt to the victims—is Nazism's "most demonic crime."