Quotes & Sayings About Shoah

Who would be so cruel?"
"You ask this question after the Shoah? After countless instances of genocide? Human beings can be incredibly cruel. — Sylvain Reynard

We abide by our responsibility as Germany for the Shoah. — Angela Merkel

The ground is still filled iwth rings, and money, and pictures, and Jewish things. I was only able to find a few of them, but they fill the earth. The hero did not ask me once what she was saying. I am not certain if he knew what she was saying, or if he knew not to inquire. — Jonathan Safran Foer

If you are a denier, get on the right side of history and stop being so gullible. Remember, it has been historically and scientifically proven, in a court of law no less, that more than 1.2 million Jews, along with 20,000 gypsies and tens of thousands of Polish and Russian political prisoners, were killed at Auschwitz alone. Beyond that, Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names has collected 4.5 million Jewish victims' names (and counting) from various archival sources. How much more evidence could you possibly want? — James Morcan

[F]or me, being a Jew means feeling the tragedy of yesterday as an inner oppression. On my left forearm I bear the Auschwitz number; it reads more briefly than the Pentateuch or the Talmud and yet provides more thorough information. It is also more binding than basic formulas of Jewish existence. If to myself and the world, including the religious and nationally minded Jews, who do not regard me as one of their own, I say: I am a Jew, then I mean by that those realities and possibilities that are summed up in the Auschwitz number. — Jean Amery

So yesterday the high-ranking visitors came after all. . . H[immler} at their head. A slight, insignificant-looking little man, with a rather good-humored face. High peaked cap, mustache, and small spectacles. I think: If you wanted to trace back all the misery and horror to just one person, it would have to be him. Around him a lot of fellows with weary faces. Very big, heavily dressed men, they swerve along whichever way he turns, like a swarm of flies, changing places among themselves (they don't stand still for a moment) and moving like a single whole. It makes a fatally alarming impression. (January 30, 1944) — David Koker

Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. — Primo Levi

My rabbis taught me that it was wrong to say God caused the Holocaust; that he simply, in 1938, turned His head. He looked away. — Shalom Auslander

We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere. — Primo Levi

My novella, 'The Lucky One,' is inspired in part by my dad and also by a Holocaust survivor I interviewed for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation. — Jenna Blum

Today, I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence. — Primo Levi

Eight people show up. The emcee is warm, friendly, and about as funny as Shoah. I take the stage to the sound of, my hand to God, one person clapping once and only once, and then I start into my act. — Patton Oswalt

The bottom line, as Raul Hilberg put it, was that most people thought that, even if Jews shouldn't be killed, they weren't worth saving. — Victoria J. Barnett

I can't recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can't explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal.

Ralph Webster, A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other — Ralph Webster

The Nazis understand everything except humour. — Mary Berg

Of course we as Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it. But as today's Report recommends, can we please leave [Adolf] Hitler and Nazi metaphors alone (especially in the context of Israel). Why? Because the Shoah is still in people's family experience. — Jeremy Corbyn

I can say that we are very clear in our mind about the responsibility of the national soldiers for the break with civilisation that was the Shoah. We are firmly convinced that this is something that will have to be handed over to generations to come ... so we don't see any reason to change our view of history. — Angela Merkel

The the Shoah involved millions of people, it was a unique experience for each of them. — Ruth Kluger