Simon Wiesenthal Quotes

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

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

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?

Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals.

Tolerance and human rights require each other.

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

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.

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.'

Human rights is the only ideology that deserves to survive

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

No gassing took place in any camp on Germany soil.

There is no freedom without justice.