Quotes & Sayings About The Holocaust By Elie Wiesel

We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything
death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth. — Elie Wiesel

Today there isn't a university where they don't have special courses [Jewish studies or Holocaust studies], hundreds and hundreds of universities, young people today want to know more than their elders did, much more, and therefore I am very optimistic about young people. — Elie Wiesel

It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory. — Elie Wiesel

Wiesenthal admitted to Bauer that he had invented a historical fantasy in order to give the Holocaust a more universal cast and to find a number which was almost as large as the Jewish death toll but not quite equal to it. When Elie Wiesel challenged Wiesenthal to provide some historical proof that five million non-Jews were murdered in the camps, Wiesenthal, rather than admit that he invented the five million number, accused Wiesel of 'Judeocentrism,' being concerned only about Jews.

-- The Eichmann Trial, page 9 — Deborah E. Lipstadt

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. — Elie Wiesel

The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria ... — Elie Wiesel

There's a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don't lose courage. You've already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don't lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer - or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive. — Elie Wiesel

My faceless neighbor spoke up:
"Don't be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve."
I exploded:
"What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?
His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily:
"I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people. — Elie Wiesel

Luz Castro "And then i explain that the world did know and remained silent. and that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. NEUTRALITY HELPS THE OPPRESSOR, NEVER THE VICTIM. SILENCE ENCOURAGES THE TORMENTOR, NEVER THE TORMENTED. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must- at that moment- become the center of the universe." Elie Wiesel (from his speech when given the Nobel Peace Prize.) — Elie Wiesel

As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice. — Iris Chang

Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky. — Elie Wiesel

You are in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz ... "
A pause. He was observing the effect his words had produced. His face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man, in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life.
"Remember," he went on. "Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don't you will go straight to the chimney. Work or crematorium
the choice is yours. — Elie Wiesel

It was neither German nor Jew who ruled the ghetto - it was illusion. — Elie Wiesel

I remember a young Hungarian Jew, his shoulders stooped like an old man's, who confessed to some infraction so as to be beaten in his uncle's stead. "I am young", he said, "and stronger than he." He was young but no less weak. He did not survive the beating — Elie Wiesel

The Pope going to Jerusalem, the Pope recognising the State of Islam, the Pope going to the wall organising a concert for the Holocaust in the Vatican, going to the synagogue in Vatican, and that happens in Protestant service as well. That doesn't mean that anti-Semitism disappear, but it is on certain level that Jews all the time, or with Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, meeting all the time, studying together, signing petitions for all kinds of causes. — Elie Wiesel

It is true that not all the victims were Jews, but all the Jews were victims — Elie Wiesel

Bread, soup - these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time. — Elie Wiesel

I was there when God was put on trial ... At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than 'guilty'. It means 'He owes us something'. Then we went to pray. — Elie Wiesel

Worse still is that mankind - the non-Jewish world - learned nothing from the Holocaust: The event which had no precedent in history, which should be equal to the Revelation at Sinai in significance. — Elie Wiesel

The Holocaust is a sacred subject. One should take off one's shoes when entering its domain, one should tremble each time one pronounces the word. — Elie Wiesel

God is dead, the God of love, of gentleness and consolation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had, under the watchful gaze of this child, vanished forever into the smoke of the human holocaust demanded by the Race, the most voracious of all idols. And — Elie Wiesel

If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier? — Scott Pelley

Some events do take place but are not true; others are, although they never occurred. — Elie Wiesel

Little by litter life returned to normal. The barbed wire which fenced us in did not cause us any real fear. We even thought ourselves rather well off; we were entirely self-contained. A little Jewish republic ... We appointed a Jewish Council, a Jewish police, an office for social assistance, a labor committee, a hygiene department - a whole government machinery.
Everyone marveled at it. We should no longer have before our eyes those hostile faces, those hate-laden stares. Our fear and anguish were at an end. We were living among Jews, among brothers. — Elie Wiesel

That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal. — Elie Wiesel

Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate -healthy virile hate- for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. — Elie Wiesel

I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it ... — Elie Wiesel

The impact of the holocaust on believers as well as unbelievers, on Jews as well as Christians, has not yet been evaluated. Not deeply, not enough. — Elie Wiesel

When I began teaching you hardly could find a university in America or a college where they would teach either Jewish studies or Holocaust studies. — Elie Wiesel

Even if I wrote on nothing else, it would never be enough, even if all the survivors did nothing but write about their experiences, it would still not be enough.
*Response when asked how much longer is he going to write about the Holocaust — Elie Wiesel

I make a difference between genocide and Holocaust. Holocaust was mainly Jewish, that was the only people, to the last Jew, sentenced to die for one reason, for being Jewish, that's all. Genocide is something else. Genocide has been actually codified by the United Nations. It's the intent of killing, the intent of killing people, a community in this culture so forth, but no other people has been really interested. — Elie Wiesel

Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings! the Hungarian police were screaming.
That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death. — Elie Wiesel