World War II Quotes

″‘Hitler made only one big mistake when he built his Atlantic Wall’, the paratroopers liked to say. ‘He forgot to put a roof on it.‘”

“Thus did 13,400 of America’s finest youth, who had been training for this moment for two years, hurl themselves against Hitler’s Fortress Europe.”

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

“But there was a Germany the boys could not see, a Germany that was hidden from them, either by design or by time. It wasn’t just that the signs - ‘Für Juden verboten,’ ‘Juden sind hier unerwünscht’ - had been removed, or that the Gypsies had been rounded up and taken away, or that the vicious Stürmer newspaper had been withdrawn from the racks in the tobacco shops in Kopenick. There were larger, darker, more enveloping secrets all around them.”

“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.”

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

“Peace has a bitter taste. And the future is foreboding.”

“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’re playing with Pandora’s box. Sometimes it’s better not to open it. Sometimes, it’s better not to know.”

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

“Nick: UP YOURS! … George: You take the trouble to construct a civilization…to…to build a society, based on the principles of…of principle … then all at once … through all the sensible sounds of men building … comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours.”

“Some of the older folks resisted leaving right up to the end and had to have their bags packed for them and be physically lifted and shoved onto the buses.”

“The name Manzanar meant nothing to us when we left Boyle Heights. We didn’t know where it was or what it was. We went because the government ordered us to.”

“Moving under what appeared to be government protection, to an area less directly threatened by the war seemed not such a bad idea at all. For some it actually sounded like a fine adventure.”

“Mama’s first concern now was to keep the family together, and once the war began, she felt safer there [Terminal Island] than isolated racially in Ocean Park.”

“I couldn’t understand why he was home all day, when Mama had to go out working. I was ashamed of him for that and, in a deeper way, for being what had led to our imprisonment, that is, for being so unalterably Japanese.”

“The years went by, and Mary Alice and I grew up, slower than we wanted to, faster than we realized. Another war came, World War II, and I wanted to get in it. The war looked like my chance to realize my old dream of flying.

“I’m glad our families have decided to survive this war together, Ivy. I think we’re more alike than different.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“All the visitors came from the west of the country, the famine having driven them to the east and the north. It was early winter 1944-45, and there was a war on. That meant there was barely anything left to eat in the big cities.”

“The German planes came and bombed and shot the men on the beach. In reality the German planes near Dunkirk were grounded because of heavy fog, rain, and clouds.”

Then John and Pat find a way to do something to help the war effort. An amazing story of bravery and courage.

“Both of them feeling nostalgia at World War II of all things and believing this is just going to be much the same, no need to get too fussed about it. ”

“And all the time other things kept disappearing too: cement, a telescope, tin hats, fire buckets, stirrup pumps, even an Anderson shelter!”

“It is a contemporary adventure story set on a fictional island in the English Channel during World War II and eventually during a German occupation.”

“Philipa, or Pips as she was called, was just too good to be true for me. She could do everything and anything with expertise. Everyone, but everyone, loved her and thought she was wonderful, even the German soldiers in the enemy trenches.”

“The four Melendy children live with their father, a widowed professor of economics, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper. During the height of World War II, the Melendy family moves out of New York City and into the countryside.”