Holocaust Quotes

“Their lost voices must continue to be heard.”

“Groups, staring at the ground, looking horribly sad; they all had one thing in common: they were all terribly skinny and their eyes were sunken and they all had shaved heads”

“I’ll find a way to go back and save him, I’ll find a way.”

“Sometimes, Miss Jarmond, it’s not easy to bring back the past. There are unpleasant surprises. The truth is harder than ignorance.”

“I cannot bear the weight of my past. Yet I cannot throw away the key to your cupboard.”

“Why was being Jewish so dreadful? Why were Jews being treated like this?”

“The eyes of a woman in the face of a ten-year-old girl.”

“I wanted to tell them, that I knew, that I remembered, and that I could not forget.′

“She did not bow her head in shame. She stood straight, her chin high. She wiped away the tears.”

“The girl wondered: These policemen... didn’t they have families, too? Didn’t they have children? Children they went home to? How could they treat children this way? Were they told to do so, or did they act this way naturally? Were they in fact machines, not human beings? She looked closely at them. They seemed of flesh and bone. They were men. She couldn’t understand.”

“In that sheltered, gentle life that seemed far away, the girl would have believed her mother. She used to believe everything her mother said. But in this harsh new world, the girl felt she had grown up. She felt older than her mother. She knew the other women were saying the truth. She knew the rumors were true. She did not know how to explain this to her mother. Her mother had become like a child.”

“She had grown up too much to be afraid anymore. She was no longer a baby. Her parents would be proud of her. That’s what she wanted them to be. Proud because she had escaped from that camp. Proud because she was going to Paris, to save her brother. Proud, because she wasn’t afraid.”

“You get attached to places, you know. Like people, I suppose.”

“There came the news, at first somewhat guarded, then, a few days later, clear and outspoken, of the German concentration camps.”

“The man’s face and body told the story more eloquently than his words: pain-haunted eyes, shaking hands that could not forget.”

“Live,” he whispered. “For my Chaya. For all our Chayas. Live. And remember.”

“I will be brave. I am the only one who knows about the ovens, but I will be brave. I will not take away their hope, which is all they have. I will not tell them that the Nazis often lied and said people were going to take showers when they took them to be killed.”

“Overhead the swallows dipped down to catch bugs rising from the ground. Then they soared back up beyond the barracks. Hannah watched them for a moment, scarcely breathing. It was as if all nature ignored what went on in the camp. There were brilliant sunsets and soft breezes. Around the commandant’s house, bright flowers were teased by the wind. Once she’d seen a fox cross the meadow to disappear into the forest.“

“We are all monsters because we are letting it happen.”

“But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with a sudden awful panic that she could no longer recall anything from the past. I cannot remember, she whispered to herself.”

“Six million,” Hannah said, “but that’s not all the Jews there are. In the end, in the future, there will be Jews still. And there will be Israel, a Jewish state, where there will be a Jewish president and a Jewish senate. And in America, Jewish movie stars.”

“This was 1944... we knew everything. And here we were.”

“People haven’t changed... Maybe they need a newer, bigger Holocaust.”

“He crawled in among the bales of rope where I was hiding and wait for father to decide what to do. Father was thinking. He knew that they would take me, even though that meant splitting us up. Trying to resist would only make things worse so he made up his mind to hide too.”

“Then suddenly, one day, Alex hears the voices of intruders who have forced their way into number 78, and he is filled with terror and dread. Courage and bravery are not unusual in times of war, but Alex is only eleven, and his story is really about the will to overcome cruelty and injustice.”

“I can remember my mother refusing to go out into the street because she couldn’t stand the sight of all the children begging for bread when she had nothing to give them. Her first worry was for me and my brother, and every slice of bread she gave another child meant one less for us.”

“And then I couldn’t hear them anymore. I uncocked the pistol and put it back in my pocket, first wrapping it in my handkerchief to keep it clean. I drank a little water from the bottle and switched on the flashlight. It had a strong beam. I switched it off again. I would need it at night and mustn’t waste the batteries.”

“The stores on the Polish side were hidden by the wall. Sometimes we looked longingly up at the windows above us, because we could have seen so much more from the. There was just no way to reaching them, though.”