Auschwitz Quotes

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  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  George Santayana

  Past, Infancy Is, History

  "The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress", Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense by George Santayana, 1905-1906.

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• Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

  Theodor Adorno

  Animal, Thinking, Holocaust

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• Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

  Billy Graham

  Men, Violence, Reminders

  "Billy Graham, on Satan and Jonestown" by Edwin Clark, www.nytimes.com. December 05, 1978.

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• Even if surrounded with explanations, Auschwitz can never be grasped.

  Gunter Grass

  Explanation, Ifs

  "The Boys' Crusade". Book by Paul Fussell (p. 15), September 9, 2003.

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• The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.

  Ian Kershaw

  Hate, Indifference, Built

  Ian Kershaw (2002). “Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933-1945”, p.277, Oxford University Press

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• Auschwitz cries out with the pain of immense suffering and pleads for a future of respect, peace and encounter among peoples.

  Pope Francis

  Respect, Peace, Pain

  Pope Francis‏ @Pontifex, twitter.com. January 27, 2015.

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• This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Believe, Ignorance, Reality

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God.

  Primo Levi

  Atheist

  "Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life by Berel Lang - review" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 2, 2014.

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• My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanize any other must first be dehumanized himself.
  The oppressors are no longer really human, whatever uniform they wear.

  Hajo Meyer

  Lessons, Want, Uniforms

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• Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.

  Primo Levi

  Country, Roots, Air

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• At Auschwitz, not only man died, but also the idea of man. To live in a world where there is nothing anymore, where the executioner acts as god, as judge-many wanted no part of it. It was its own heart the world incinerated at Auschwitz.

  Elie Wiesel

  Heart, Men, Ideas

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “Legends of Our Time”, p.190, Schocken

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• We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

  George Steiner

  Morning, Men, Play

  Language and Silence preface (1967)

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• Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Men, Politics, Stakes

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.116, Beacon Press

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• I remember those faces of people who were good I saw that. I saw a father who gave his bread to his son and his son gave back the bread to his father. That, to me, was such a defeat of the enemies, will of the enemies, theories of the enemies, aspirations, here [in Auschwitz].

  Elie Wiesel

  Father, Son, People

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

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• We must be listened to: above and beyond our personal experience, we have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone. It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.

  Primo Levi

  Events, Fundamentals, Unexpected

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• Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.

  Primo Levi

  Would Be, Deny, Remakes

  Interview with Daniel Toaff, "Sorgenti di Vita", translated by Mirto Stone, March 25, 1983.

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• I'm not alive. People believe memories grow vague, are erased by time, since nothing endures against the passage of time. That's the difference; time does not pass over me, over us. It doesn't erase anything, doesn't undo it. I'm not a live. I died in Auschwitz but no one knows it.

  Charlotte Delbo

  Memories, Believe, Differences

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• Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.

  Edward Bond

  Tragedy

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• Denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

  Philip Gourevitch

  Tyrants, Evil, Social Justice

  Philip Gourevitch (2015). “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Picador Classic”, p.122, Pan Macmillan

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• Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Prayer, Men, Our Generation

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.102, Beacon Press

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• Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.

  Primo Levi

  Later In Life, Perfect, Joy

  Primo Levi (1996). “Survival In Auschwitz”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• Perhaps some day someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible; but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Forever, Levels

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “Legends of Our Time”, p.6, Schocken

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• Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.

  Elie Wiesel

  Holocaust, Tragedy, Answers

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.14, Macmillan

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• Humanity's become a product and when humanity is a product, you get Auschwitz and you get Chair.

  Edward Bond

  Humanity, Literature, Chairs

  "Still bolshie after all these years" by Brian Logan, www.theguardian.com. April 4, 2000.

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• Suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. So it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Writing, Suffering

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