Holocaust Survivors Quotes

The Nazis understand everything except humour. ~ Mary Berg

You kill yourself when you hate. It's the worst disease in the world. ~ William Schiff

Anyone who grew up with Holocaust survivors knows what they had to overcome to tell their stories. For decades after the war they treated their experiences as shameful secrets. On top of the ignominy of victimhood, the desperate straits to which they were reduced could remove the last traces of their humanity in ways they could be forgiven for wanting to forget. ~ Steven Pinker

I know the dangers and the seductions of the Middle East. It is part of my identity. I grew up among a people who routinely referred to the creation of the State of Israel as the Nakba - the catastrophe. And yet I fell in love with and married a Jewish American woman, the only daughter of two Holocaust survivors, both Jewish Austrians. ~ Kai Bird

Within a decade or two, all Holocaust survivors will likely have passed away so a ticking clock is in effect in this battle between the truth and lies. Keep in mind even those survivors born in a concentration camp during WW2 would be at least 71 years-of-age when this book (the one you are reading now) was released. Those survivors old enough to clearly recall the events of that nightmare will, of course, be older and have much less time left. As the memory of the Holocaust begins to fade away, it will become easier to deny the genocide even occurred unless those of us who are truthseekers are able to embrace the memory of the genocide and educate others do the same. What's needed in this propaganda war is for the true stories of Holocaust survivors – as well as those of the Nazi perpetrators, their associates and others who witnessed the genocide – to be told loudly and clearly so that there will never, ever be room for doubt in generations to come. After all, nothing is more powerful, credible or damning than eyewitness accounts. ~ James Morcan

I thought those were others. Soon, I was to learn that they were us. ~ Ralph Webster

The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet. ~ Jonathan Sacks

As the generation of Holocaust survivors and liberators dwindles, the torch of remembrance, of bearing witness, and of education must continue forward. ~ Dan Gillerman

As the son of Holocaust survivors, this is life - you're put in a corner, and you have to get out. I believe that you can always get out. ~ Etgar Keret

My grandparents are holocaust survivors so I was really aware at a young age how horrible human beings can be to one another. ~ Max Bemis

To deny the reported six million (approximately) Jews who died, or the 11 million people in total, is to ignore all the eyewitness accounts from Holocaust survivors, the non-Jewish witnesses of the millions who died the open-air massacres around Europe, the concentration camp guards, Nazi officers who admitted to gassings and other related crimes immediately after WW2, and the universal agreement of all mainstream historians who have studied this historical event inside out – not to mention every single scientist who has ever analyzed forensic evidence retrieved from the Nazi genocide. Not even the most corrupt courtroom on Earth could ignore this much evidence – for collectively these confirmations of the Holocaust equate to irrefutable proof that the reported death toll is indeed correct. It is possibly the most well-documented crime of the 20th Century, but remember for religious extremists, Nazi apologists or other anti-Semites it would never matter how much evidence you put in front of them. They would always deny the Holocaust because to admit the event occurred would be to stop believing the Jews are inferior to them. It would also require such bigots to admit the very uncomfortable truth to themselves: that their 'own kind' did these despicable things to the Jewish people. ~ James Morcan

I grew up in Brooklyn, and my parents were Holocaust survivors, so they never taught me anything about nature, but they taught me a lot about gratitude. ~ Louie Schwartzberg

How can a race spread out across multiple countries be considered a threat? ~ Heather Morris

The Mormons even baptized Anne Frank. It took Ernest Michel, then chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, three years to get Mormons to agree to stop proxy-baptizing Holocaust victims. ~ Maureen Dowd

Never forget" is the collective plea of Holocaust survivors. And in the first few decades after WW2 ended, it really did seem as if humanity would always remember, and perhaps even learn from, the Nazi genocide so that future atrocities may be prevented. Unfortunately, the historicity of the Holocaust has been undermined and chipped away at by the exact same sinister forces that created the genocide in the first place: racists, religious bigots and the most paranoid type of conspiracy theorists who, together, are uniting – often unwittingly – to form a new wave of anti-Semitism that will not willingly accept the obvious facts of the past. This chipping away (at the truth) began slowly and insidiously – much like the Holocaust itself – but sadly, and worryingly, it is gathering pace. ~ James Morcan

I think the typical way is that usually Holocaust survivors are known to be very quiet and full of anxiety, many of them don't like life, don't trust people. But my parents were children during the Holocaust. And my father was very optimistic. ~ Etgar Keret

I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal. ~ Ralph Webster

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

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. ~ Anne Frank

Where are the young who must dedicate their roseate hours, their illusions and enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who must generously spill their blood to wash away so much shame, so many crimes, so much abomination? Pure and spotless must be the victim for the holocaust to be acceptable. Where are you, you children who must embody the vigor of life that has fled from your veins, the purity of ideas that has become in our minds and the fire of enthusiasm that has gone out in our hearts? We await you, Oh youth! Come, we await you! ~ Jose Rizal

One of the most compelling sources on the validity of repressed memories of trauma has been the field of combat trauma. - Advances in Dissociation Research and practice in Israel ~ Eli Somer

Nothing about these times makes any sense. Nothing. Putting it to words only makes it sound too simple. ~ Ralph Webster

I also loved that there [in Into the Forest] was a beautiful balance to it, where they were strong and survivors and doing things in the film that we normally only see men do, but they were still human and vulnerable, and they still broke and had moments of weakness. That's something that we don't often get to see in these films, either. ~ Evan Rachel Wood

The Holocaust is an extremely important historical event humanity must learn
from if it is to survive let alone achieve world peace. It's not just a Jewish issue – it's a human one. If more recent genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia are any guide, the lessons of Nazi Germany have not yet been learnt. ~ James Morcan

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's messenger,
his huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed is wife and spoke to her:
'It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
the square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows of that upper storey
where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
her body turned into transparent salt,
and her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
she who gave up her life to steal one glance.

1922-24 ~ Anna Akhmatova

Things had gone badly at Hell House, although not quite as horribly as the '31 investigation. At least this time there were survivors, if you wanted to call being reduced to catatonia and raving lunacy 'surviving'. ~ Nancy A. Collins

The holocaust against the unborn is the greatest sin they could ever do or even ever participate in. ~ Norma McCorvey

Trauma creates one of four types of people: victims, rescuers, or perps - and if you're really lucky and really strong and very willing and brave, survivors. ~ Allison Anders

She hadn't been scared for herself, she'd been frightened for me.
Good. Her A-class horror movie scream earlier had nearly put me in an early grave. When this was over, I could call us even. ~ Violet Cross

Take away the Holocaust and what do you have left? Without their precious Holocaust, what are the Jews? Just a grubby little bunch of international bandits and assassins and squatters who have perpetrated the most massive, cynical fraud in human history. ~ Harold Covington

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 lessened some of the suffocating weight I carried by finally opening up to a counselor. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

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

So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war. ~ Paul Fussell

The Iranian regime gives financial support to terrorist organizations all over the world, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the wiping the state of Israel from the map, while developing long-range missiles and trying to obtain nuclear weapon. ~ Moshe Katsav

Maternal absence, in one form or another, is always found in the background of the incest romance. Womens literature on incest generally treats the theme of maternal absence tragically. Mens literature trivializes it or treats it comically. And clinical literature tends to treat it judgmentally. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

It's the responsibility of the survivor to tell the story. ~ Tom Spanbauer

A St. Louis oncology nurse quoted Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl to States News Service in 2012: " 'What is to give light must endure burning.' I think people who care for others understand. Caregiving is painful. ~ Alexandra Robbins

Some, while deploring animal abuses, on the same breath approve 'benefits to humans from certain animal abuses'! Who would criticize the Jewish holocaust or Black slavery, and YET praise the benefits to Germans or Whites??? This convenient ambiguity at the expense of animals is unacceptable!!! ~ Adela Popescu

The immigrant artist shares with all other artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world. So though we may not be creating as dangerously as our forebears - though we are not risking torture, beatings, execution, though exile does not threaten us into perpetual silence - still, while we are at work bodies are littering the streets somewhere. People are buried under rubble somewhere. Mass graves are being dug somewhere. Survivors are living in makeshift tent cities and refugee camps somewhere, shielding their heads from the rain, closing their eyes, covering their ears, to shut out the sounds of military "aid" helicopters. And still, many are reading, and writing, quietly, quietly. ~ Edwidge Danticat

People expect all stories of abuse
to be loud and angry
but they're not.

Sometimes they're quiet and cruel
and swept under the rug. ~ Trista Mateer

The tombstones smashed in Hebrew cemeteries and plundered for Polish sidewalks; today bored citizens, staring at their feet while waiting for a bus, can still read the inscriptions. ~ Anne Michaels

When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to "being crazy" and having had abusive parents, clients will choose "crazy" most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her therapy:
I hate it when we talk about my family as "dysfunctional" or "abusive." Think about what you are asking me to accept - that my parents didn't love me, care about me, or protect me. If I have to choose between "being abused" or "being sick and crazy," it's less painful to see myself as nuts than to imagine my parents as evil. ~ Lisa Ferentz

As I walked out of the ghetto with its tombstone-crowned walls and along the streets of Krakow, I was dumbfounded to see that life seemed just as it had been before I entered the ghetto. It was as if I were in a time warp...or as if the ghetto were on another planet. I stared at the clean, well-dressed people, busily moving from place to place. They seemed so normal, so happy. Had they not known what we had been suffering just a few blocks away? How could they not have known? How could they not have done something to help us? A streetcar stopped, and passengers boarded, oblivious to our presence. They showed absolutely no interest in who we were, where we were going, or why. That our misery, confinement, and pain were irrelevant to their lives was simply incomprehensible. ~ Leon Leyson

Ever notice, the ones who deny the holocaust are usually the same ones who want to repeat it? ~ Dennis Prager

On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

Combine a left-leaning upbringing with a family with direct experience of the Holocaust and someone with aspirations to write and I guess, sooner or later, that person will have a stab at writing something about the Holocaust. ~ Elliot Perlman

An Inconvenient Truth is so convincing that it makes opposers of the argument as credible as Holocaust deniers. ~ Jon Niccum

A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. ~ Thomas Mann

In 2011, actor Johnny Depp told the November issue of Vanity Fair that he felt participating in a photoshoot was akin to rape.

"Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow. Raped . . . It feels like a kind of weird - just weird, man. But whenever you have a photo shoot or something like that, it's like - you just feel dumb. It's just so stupid," he said.

Likening instances of being flustered or uneasy to the often life-shattering experience of rape has become a far too common comparison in modern lexicon.

The phrase "Facebook rape" is perhaps the most widely used, which implies one person has posted on another person's Facebook account - usually something intended to embarrass the person.

But the casual, flippant use of the term "rape" in instances that do not involve sexual violence is highly problematic in that it trivialises one of the most despicable invasions of a human being.

Desensitising the masses to the term "rape" is just another way the conversation surrounding sexual assault is derailed or diluted in society.

Rape is, and should be considered universally, as a serious societal sickness that occurs within the "toxic silence" that surrounds sexual assault as Tara Moss put so elegantly in her recent Q&A appearance.

Further to that, the use of the term can be a trigger for rape survivors in that it may jolt terrifying memories of their own experience.

According to the ~ Emma Elsworth

Five million Palestinians have not had a home for 60 years. It is amazing really: You have been paying reparations for the Holocaust for 60 years and will have to keep paying up for another 100 years. Why then is the fate of the Palestinians no issue here? ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad