jews Quotes

“That the Jew is tasteful and epicurean, more so than the German, is the mere consequence of his geographical origin and his cultural age.

“The Germans and the Jews are wonderfully alike. There are, of course, great and obvious differences between them, because the Jews are few, scattered, anciently civilized, and southern in origin, while the Germans are many, concentrated, primitive, and northern.”

“Nobody has proved to my friends that the Nazis were wrong about the Jews. Nobody can. The truth or falsity of what the Nazis said, and of what my extremist friends believed, was immaterial, marvelously so. There simply was no way to reach it, no way, at least, that employed the procedures of logic and evidence. The bill-collector told me that Jews were filthy, that the home of a Jewish woman in his boyhood town was a pigsty; and the baker told me that the Jews’ fanaticism about cleanliness was a standing affront to the “Germans,” who were clean enough. What difference did the truth, if there were truth, make?”

“We are commanded to study His Torah! We are commanded to sit in the light of the Presence! It is for this that we were created! . . . Not the world, but the people of Israel!”

“A month or so ago, her mother had sewn the stars on all her clothes. On all the family’s clothes, except her little brother’s. Before that their identity cards had been stamped with the word “Jew” or “Jewess.”

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

“She couldn’t imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn’t imagine why she and all these other people with her had to be treated this way. Who decided this, and what for?”

“I called my parents and asked if I could come home, but they wouldn’t even speak to me. It was bad enough that I’d married a Jew, but now I wanted a divorce as well? My father made Mother tell me that in his eyes I had died the day I eloped.”

“Their tales of woe and fear unspeakable gushed forth and beat upon my ears. They told me stories of their friends and relatives who had said unguarded things in public and disappeared without a trace, stories of the Gestapo, stories of neighbours’ quarrels and petty personal spite turned into political persecution, stories of concentration camps and pogroms, stories of rich Jews stripped and beaten and robbed of everything they had and then denied the right to earn a pauper’s wage”

“But out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being.”

“He will immediately assume you are gay, and there is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have of homosexuals. None. It’s like the Jewish fear of Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it’s more like the Nazi fear of Jews.”

“There is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have of homosexuals. None. It’s like the Jewish fear of Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it’s more like the Nazi fear of Jews.”

″‘Don’t you see?’ Lito said. ‘The Jewish people on the ship were seeking asylum, just like us. They needed a place to hide from Hitler. From the Nazis. Mañana, we told them. We’ll let you in mañana. But we never did.’ Lito was crying now, distraught. ‘We sent them back to Europe and Hitler and the Holocaust. Back to their deaths. How many of them died because we turned them away? Because I was just doing my job?‘”

“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.“

“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.”

“You poor fellow,′ he said, ‘what a pity you wore your shoes out for a dream! Listen, if I believed a dream I once had, I would go right now to the city you came from, and I’d look for a treasure under the stove in the house of a fellow named Isaac.’ And he laughed again.”

“Usury was a sin, according to Christian teachings. Apparently, though, while lending money was sinful, borrowing was not, so many of these same Christians availed themselves of the Jewish money-lenders’ services, with the result that they were deeply in debt to them.”

“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.‘”

“I was an animal to them, a pack mule. But beasts were never treated so poorly. Working animals were expensive. They had value. I was a Jew. We were lower than animals.”

“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.”

“The Second World War is raging. Times are very hard in Poland, especially for Jews, and Alex is one of them. His mother has disappeared and his father is “selected” by the German army for an unknown destination. Alone, Alex is forced to take refuge in an abandoned building at 78 Bird Street. Here he hopes to wait out the harsh winter and the promised return of his father.”

“Another thing you won’t find is radios. There were forbidden at the beginning of the occupation. And, of course, television hasn’t been invented yet. The occupying army wants to take whatever is left in the empty houses for itself, and so it leaves the wall standing the keeps the guards stationed at the check posts.”

“He knew where some Jewish people were hiding. He was fairly certain who had an illegal wireless. He knew Dirk was a member of the secret underground forces. But Michiel kept all this dangerous information to himself.”

″‘I’m Jewish too.’ ‘You’re not!’ ‘I am!’ My father was talking to us about it only last week. He said we were Jews and no matter what happened my brother and I must never forget it.‘”

″‘There are Jews scattered all over the world,’ he said, ‘and the Nazis are telling terrible lies about them. So it’s very important for people like us to prove them wrong.’ ‘How can we?’ asked Max. ‘By being better than other people,’ said Papa. For instance, the Nazis say that Jews are dishonest. So it’s not enough for us to be as honest as anyone else. We have to be more honest.‘”

“DON’T BUY FROM JEWS!”

“Grandfather looked at us. Then he said, ‘We are Christians. Bear in mind that the Jews crucified our Lord.’ Here Father interjected, ‘But not the Schneiders!‘”

“Grandfather got up from the chair. He leaned on the table with his knuckles. So sharply it came out like a snarl, he ordered, ‘I do not wish the boy to associate with this Jew!’ He sat down again as suddenly as he had stood up.”