Holocaust Memorial Quotes

• Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.

  Jane Yolen

  Memories, Numbers, People

  Jane Yolen (1990). “The Devil's Arithmetic”, p.100, Penguin

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• I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

  Elie Wiesel

  Peace, Bystanders, History

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.170, Schocken

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  Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

  Elie Wiesel

  Bystanders, Remembrance, Silence

  Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 11 Dec. 1986

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• On my recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to visit Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial, and reaffirm our collective responsibility to confront anti-Semitism, prejudice, and intolerance across the world. On this Yom Hashoah, we must accept the full responsibility of remembrance, as nations and as individuals-not simply to pledge "never again," but to commit ourselves to the understanding, empathy and compassion that is the foundation of peace and human dignity.

  Barack Obama

  Responsibility, Opportunity, Compassion

  Statement from the President on Yom Hashoah, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. April 08, 2013.

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• Holocaust Memorial Day is intended as an inclusive commemoration of all the individuals and communities who suffered as a result of the Holocaust - not only Jews, but also Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, political prisoners and dozens of ethnic and other minorities.

  Jack Straw

  Memorial Day, Holocaust, Community

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• I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.

  Elie Wiesel

  Bystanders, Remembrance, Silence

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.141, Macmillan

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• Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

  Elie Wiesel

  Bystanders, Holocaust, Remembrance

  Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 11 Dec. 1986

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• Visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for example, I was struck by its marginalization of any other victims apart from the Jews, to the extent that it presented photographs of dead bodies in camps such as Buchenwald or Dauchau as dead Jewish bodies, when in fact relatively few Jewish prisoners were held there.

  Richard J. Evans

  Museums, Memorial, Holocaust

  Richard J. Evans (2007). “Lying About Hitler”, p.261, Basic Books

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• I cannot stress this enough: do not take powerful hallucinogens before going to a Holocaust memorial.

  Nathan Rabin

  Powerful, Stress, Memorial

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• Berlin seems like a place of healing to me though: you have both the Holocaust Memorial and Hiroshima Strasse side-by-side there. You have the whole last century libraried and you can see exactly what we did. Now there's lots of artists and musicians moving there because they can't afford the rent in London and New York, and they're having children and making it a gentle place. It seems to be a place of hope now.

  Robert Montgomery

  New York, Children, Moving

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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