Holocaust History Quotes

“If you had a secret - one that could destroy your life if shared, what would you do to protect it?”
― Shari J. Ryan, The Nurse Behind the Gates

“There’s no clearer definition of war than the sight of barbed wired fences surrounding dark fields muddied by the sky’s tears.”
― Shari J. Ryan, The Nurse Behind the Gates

“Whenever you feel like the world is against you, start counting your breaths. One breath every five seconds will show anyone who is watching that you haven’t a worry in the world.”
― Shari J. Ryan, The Nurse Behind the Gates

“The empty seats belong to the other Jewish kids who were in my class. I’m the only one left.”
― Shari J. Ryan, The Nurse Behind the Gates

“You’re right to fight for everything you believe in, and I’ll do “the same, but only until it is too dangerous. I won’t risk our lives for a fight we won’t win.”
― Shari J. Ryan, The Nurse Behind the Gates

“More often and more insistently as that time recedes, we are asked by the young who our "torturers" were, of what cloth were they made. The term torturers alludes to our ex-guardians, the SS, and is in my opinion inappropriate: it brings to mind twisted individuals, ill-born, sadists, afflicted by an original flaw. Instead, they were made of the same cloth as we, they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save the exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly. They were, for the greater part, diligent followers and functionaries, some frantically convinced of the Nazi doctrine, many indifferent, or fearful of punishment, or desirous of a good career, or too obedient. All of them had been subjected to the terrifying miseducation provided for and imposed by the schools created in accordance with the wishes of Hitler and his collaborators, and then completed by the SS "drill." Many had joined this militia because of the prestige it conferred, because of its omnipotence, or even just to escape family problems. Some, very few in truth, had changes of heart, requested transfers to the front lines, gave cautious help to prisoners or chose suicide. Let it be clear that to a greater or lesser degree all were responsible, but it must bee just as clear that behind their responsibility stands that the great majority of Germans who accepted in the beginning, out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride the "beautiful words" of Corporal Hitler, followed him as long as luck and lack of scruples favored him, were swept away by his ruin, afflicted by deaths, misery, and remorse, and rehabilitated a few years later as the result of an unprincipled political game.”
― Primo Levi

“The Soviets, at least some of them, believed in what they were doing. After all, they did it themselves and recorded what they did, in clear language, in official documents, filed in orderly archives. They could associate themselves with their deeds, because true responsibility rested with the communist party. The Nazis used grand phrases of racial superiority, and Himmler spoke of the moral sublimity involved in killing others for the sake of the race. But when the time came, Germans acted without plans and without precision, and with no sense of responsibility. In the Nazi worldview, what happened was simply what happened, the stronger should win; but nothing was certain, and certainly not the relationship between past, present and future. The Soviets believed that History was on their side and acted accordingly. The Nazis were afraid of everything except the disorder they themselves created. The systems and the mentalities were different, profoundly and interestingly so.”
― Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

“The most vital lesson to be learned from the Holocaust era is that Auschwitz was possible because the enemy suceeded in dividing, in separating, in splitting human society, nation against nation, Christian against Jew, young against old. And not enough people cared.”
― Elie Wiesel

“I had never been so grateful for shoveling shit in all my life.”
― E.J. Wood, The Forgotten Man

“Never forget, the world said after the Holocaust. But the world is forgetting.”
― E.J. Wood, The Forgotten Man

“I looked at him. He sat in the darkness, with his brows knitted tightly together, as though trying to grasp something, to understand the inconceivable, to pinpoint the moment when everything suddenly got out of control and the point of no return was officially passed by both sides – the future murderers and their victims. The new Reich sorted us into two kinds and now he suddenly found himself among those who held an ax above our miserable heads.”
― Ellie Midwood, No Woman's Land

“Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Max thought of Passover and Jewish slaves—manhandle and beaten by their Egyptian taskmasters.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“. . . Max glanced at the camp entrance, where the train came through. A gate marked the entrance. The sign read: “Arbeit macht frei” a German phrase meaning “work sets you free.” The sign was a cruel taunt, as this was certainly not a place where work set a person free.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“No one, and I mean no one escapes from this camp. Anyone who tries with be shot, along with many others, in order to teach a lesson no one will ever forget.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“If Max had any doubts about attempting to escape, this conversation alleviated them. He would not end up like the men and women in the pit . . .”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“Max wanted to spit in Kellermann’s face and tell him he felt obligated to try to escape. It was his duty to buck the authority of those who commanded the camp. Wisely, he held his saliva and his tongue.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“Max stuck his head out the passenger side window and yelled, “Open the gate, you idiots!” in perfect German. “I’ve got to get this car to Himmler.” The stunned gatekeepers rushed to open the gate, and the five men drove through it to freedom and into the history books.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“Many people have stories of bravery during the Holocaust. I am no braver than anyone else. 6,000,000 Jews lost their lives during the war. They are the heroes, my son, not me. I was lucky.”
“Some people make their own luck, Zayde! You are one of those. I’m so proud to be your grandson.”
“Then you’ll do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Tell everyone you know about the brave Jews who escaped from Auschwitz but don’t tell them about your grandfather.”
“Why not? I’m so proud of you! You were part of the resistance.”
“Because it is not important that one of the Holocaust survivors is your Zayde. All Jews are relatives—all are important, especially after the death of the 6,000,000 and so many other attempts to wide us out . . .”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“Jewish resistance and prisoner ingenuity were vital parts of Jewish history, and people needed to remember them . . . He had a duty to report his grandfather’s heroic exploits to generations to come. L’dor v’dor, Zayde.”
― Mark M. Bello, L'DOR V'DOR: From Generation to Generation

“I once saw a documentary film in which an elderly Jewish man demonstrated how he and seven others had survived. For eighteen months they were hidden in a primitive ground cavity, dug for this purpose by a Polish peasant in his field. The cavity was under a pigsty, and it held all of them only if they lay side by side without moving. The man lay down on the grassy spot where the hiding place had once been, stiffly, his arms aligned to his body. This is how they lay each day, for eighteen months, he said. In the night, they clawed an opening in the earth above and climbed out to get the food that the peasant brought to them, to stretch and relieve themselves. Then they burrowed back into the hole and squeezed themselves in side by side before covering the aperture above them. I confess that as I looked at the man demonstrating his position, lying stiffly on the ground, I wondered what made this game worth the candle; why he and the seven others would have wished to go on. The paralysis of this situation, the abjection of turning into an underground animal, seemed to me too unbearable, too dehumanizing, to be tolerated. I kept remembering, as I watched the documentary, one of my mother’s refrains that had threaded through my childhood, spoken in her wondering, skeptical voice, before I could really understand what she meant: “People just wanted to survive, to live. . . . To live at all costs. Why? What’s so wonderful about this life? And yet, people wanted to live.”
― Eva Hoffman, After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. — Elie Wiesel”
― Sally Lefton Wolfe, The Survivor’s Legacy: How the Holocaust Shaped Future Generations

“There was every proof that the persecution and genocide against Romani minorities had been carried out on the basis of racial ideology. Nevertheless, many Roms encountered difficulties reclaiming their German citizenship. As a result they were also considered to be ineligible for compensation payments, which according to the West German compensation law could be made only to German citizens. By the time their citizenship had been reinstated and compensation claims were filed again, claimants were often informed that the deadline for submitting claims had passed.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“The Nazi world was an empire of total force, with no restraints. It was a world composed of masters and slaves, in which gentleness, kindness, pity, the respect for law, and a taste for freedom were no longer virtues, but inexpiable crimes. It was a world in which one could only obey by crawling, killing on orders, and denying oneself in silence if one could not howl with the wolves. It was a world where people exterminated for pleasure and the murderers were treated as heroes. It already seems far away, like a nightmare one would prefer to forget. And yet the poisoned yeast is still ready to rise. Men have not the right to forget so quickly. They have not the right. Never . . .”
― Jacques Delarue, The Gestapo: A History of Horror

“What a thrilling story of wartime survival!”
― Ann Kirschner, Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story

“When you are living under the wolves, you have to howl.' ....'I will never howl with these wolves.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

“To those who encountered Otto at the time, he seems to be a man purged by fire, walking through Amsterdam as though in a strange dream, searching for news of his children. Finding out that he was his family's sole survivor must have sent him to a very dark place. Vince hypothesized that Otto's grief had eventually turned into a mission to find the people responsible for the Annex raid, although his motive was not vengeance; he was seeking accountability and justice.”
― Rosemary Sullivan, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

“I hoped, and I still hope, that wherever her spirit is, she accompanies me and understands the passion that burned in me to tell our children and future generations what happened to her and to other children who survived the inferno, children who paid a heavy price for the horror they experienced.”
― Zipora Klein Jakob, The Forbidden Daughter: The True Story of a Holocaust Survivor - Library Edition

“Born in fire and died in fire.”
― Zipora Klein Jakob, The Forbidden Daughter: The True Story of a Holocaust Survivor

“What scares me the most is not just that history is repeating itself, but how many Americans can't see that history is repeating itself.

They know nothing about what Hitler did before the Holocaust. That's why they can't see that Trump is following Hitler's playbook step by step.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America