Wiesenthal Quotes & Sayings

There is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today ... they are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes possible the resurrection of these two monsters. — Simon Wiesenthal

Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them. — Simon Wiesenthal

In fact, this figure [five million "murdered" Gentiles] is too high if one is counting victims who were targeted exclusively for racial reasons, but too low if one counts the total number of victims the Nazi regime killed outside military operations.
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Wiesenthal's aggrandizement of his role in the Eichmann capture is far less disturbing and historiographically significant than another of his inventions. In an attempt to elicit non-Jewish interest in the Holocaust, Wiesenthal decided to broaden the population of victims - even though it meant falsifying history. He began to speak of eleven million victims: six million Jews and five million non-Jews. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer immediately recognized that this number made no historical sense. Who, Bauer wondered, constituted Wiesenthal's five million.

--The Eichmann Trial, page 8 — Deborah E. Lipstadt

Freedom is not a gift of heaven, you have to fight for it every day — Simon Wiesenthal

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

Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what I can do for those who have not survived. — Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal told me that any political party in a democracy that uses the word 'freedom' in its name is either Nazi or Communist. — Simon Wiesenthal

If you know from history the danger, then part of the danger is over because it may not take you by surprise as it did your ancestors. — Simon Wiesenthal

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition. — Simon Wiesenthal

The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest danger threatening mankind. — Simon Wiesenthal

Human rights is the only ideology that deserves to survive — Simon Wiesenthal

God must have been on leave during the Holocaust. — Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal, like few others personally felt the shadow of history in its brutality. — Helmut Kohl

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing. — Simon Wiesenthal

When history looks back, I want people to know that the Nazis could not kill millions of people with impunity. — Simon Wiesenthal

We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty? — Simon Wiesenthal

There were millions of such families anxious only for peace and quiet in their own little nests. These were the mounting blocks by which the criminals climbed to power and kept it. — Simon Wiesenthal

I have lost my mother, my father, my five, and ninety relatives in Poland. Poland is for me a cemetery. — Simon Wiesenthal

Tolerance and human rights require each other. — Simon Wiesenthal

Forgetting is something that time takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision. — Simon Wiesenthal

The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it. — Simon Wiesenthal

Rest assured that our work is not over because our work has never been only hunting Nazi war criminals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an institution, a worldwide institution, engaged in combating anti-Semitism, bigotry, racism. And unfortunately, did we say goodbye to genocide after Hitler died in the bunker? No, we didn't. So in such a world, I'm afraid there will always be a need for organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center. — Marvin Hier

I know I am not only the bad conscience of the Nazis. I am also the bad conscience of the Jews. Because what I have taken up as my duty was everybody's duty. — Simon Wiesenthal

Technology without hatred can be a blessing. Technology with hatred is always a disaster. — Simon Wiesenthal

No gassing took place in any camp on Germany soil. — Simon Wiesenthal

Even before I had had time to really think things through, I realized we must not forget. If all of us forgot, the same thing might happen again, in 20 or 50 or 100 years. — Simon Wiesenthal

Violence is like a weed - it does not die even in the greatest drought. — Simon Wiesenthal

None of my 'clients' - not Eichmann, not Stangl, not Mengele, and not even Hitler or Stalin - was born a criminal. Somebody had to teach them to hate: maybe the society, maybe the politics, maybe just a Jewish prostitute. — Simon Wiesenthal

At the first Holocaust memorial commemoration in the Capitol Rotunda, both President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Mondale referred to the 'eleven million victims.' Carter also used Wiesenthal's figures of 'six million Jews and five million others' in his Executive Order establishing the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. I have attended Holocaust memorial commemorations in places as diverse as synagogues and army forts where eleven candles were lit. More significant is that strangers have repeatedly taken me and other colleagues to task for ignoring the five million non-Jews. When I explain that this is an invented concept, they become convinced of my ethnocentrism. — Deborah E. Lipstadt

For me the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy. After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together - many of them only because they helped Jews. — Simon Wiesenthal

For your benefit, learn from our tragedy. It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews. It can also be other people. — Simon Wiesenthal

What connects two thousand years of genocide? Too much power in too few hands. — Simon Wiesenthal

Justice for crimes against humanity must have no limitations. — Simon Wiesenthal

You're a religious man, ... You believe in God and life after death. I also believe. When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, 'What have you done?' there will be many answers. You will say, 'I became a jeweler.' Another will say, 'I smuggled coffee and American cigarettes.' Another will say, 'I built houses.' But I will say, 'I didn't forget you.' — Simon Wiesenthal

There is no freedom without justice. — Simon Wiesenthal

The end was surely near. The Nazis killed you only when you were naked, because they knew, psychologically, that naked people never resist. — Simon Wiesenthal

Hatred can be nurtured anywhere, idealism can be perverted into sadism anywhere. If hatred and sadism combine with modern technology the inferno could erupt anew anywhere. — Simon Wiesenthal

Technology without hate can be so beneficial for mankind, but in conjunction with hatred, it leads to disaster. — Simon Wiesenthal

Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals. — Simon Wiesenthal