Shoah Quotes

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.

Today, I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.

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.

Voi che vivete sicuri Nelle vostre tiepide case, Voi che trovate tornando a sera Il cibo caldo e visi amici: Considerate se questo è un uomo Che lavora nel fango Che non conosce pace Che lotta per mezzo pane Che muore per un sì o per un no. Considerate se questa è una donna, Senza capelli e senza nome Senza più forza di ricordare Vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo Come una rana d'inverno. Meditate che questo è stato: Vi comando queste parole. Scolpitele nel vostro cuore Stando in casa andando per via, Coricandovi alzandovi; Ripetetele ai vostri figli. O vi si sfaccia la casa, La malattia vi impedisca, I vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.

[F]or me, being a Jew means feeling the tragedy of yesterday as an inner oppression. On my left forearm I bear the Auschwitz number; it reads more briefly than the Pentateuch or the Talmud and yet provides more thorough information. It is also more binding than basic formulas of Jewish existence. If to myself and the world, including the religious and nationally minded Jews, who do not regard me as one of their own, I say: I am a Jew, then I mean by that those realities and possibilities that are summed up in the Auschwitz number.

Who would be so cruel?” “You ask this question after the Shoah? After countless instances of genocide? Human beings can be incredibly cruel.

Eight people show up. The emcee is warm, friendly, and about as funny as Shoah. I take the stage to the sound of, my hand to God, one person clapping once and only once, and then I start into my act.

The bottom line, as Raul Hilberg put it, was that most people thought that, even if Jews shouldn't be killed, they weren't worth saving.

The Nazis understand everything except humour.

Tout le monde voulait être dans le coup ce jour-là. Car, ce jour-là, on allait écrire l'Histoire avec un grand H. Il y avait eu un ghetto à Cracovie pendant plus de sept siècles, et voici qu'à la fin de la journée, ou au plus tard le lendemein, ces sept siècles ne seraient plus qu'une rumeur, et Cracovie serait enfin fiduciare (débarrassée des juifs).

None of the various 'language rules,' carefully contrived to deceive and to camouflage, had a more decisive effect on the mentality of the killers than this first war decree of Hitler, in which the word for 'murder' was replaced by the phrase 'to grant a mercy death.' Eichmann, asked by the police examiner if the directive to avoid 'unnecessary hardships' was not a bit ironic, in view of the fact that the destination of these people was certain death anyhow, did not even understand the question, so firmly was it still anchored in his mind that the unforgivable sin was not to kill people but to cause unnecessary pain.

If you are a denier, get on the right side of history and stop being so gullible. Remember, it has been historically and scientifically proven, in a court of law no less, that more than 1.2 million Jews, along with 20,000 gypsies and tens of thousands of Polish and Russian political prisoners, were killed at Auschwitz alone. Beyond that, Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names has collected 4.5 million Jewish victims’ names (and counting) from various archival sources. How much more evidence could you possibly want?

One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate. I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.

The the Shoah involved millions of people, it was a unique experience for each of them.

The Holocaust happened because of the constructed belief in one untrue conspiracy theory, and the denial of its genocide afterward came from the creation and propagation of another.

la forme moderne de l'antisémitisme n'est-elle pas très précisément dans le déni de l'évidence ? l'antisémitisme moderne n'a-t-il pas pour article de foi quasi premier cette terrible adresse aux vivants : "la Shoah ne fut pas ce que vous dites ; elle ne fut, en aucune manière, ce crime exorbitant à la longue histoire des crimes (ch. 57 La Shoah au coeur et dans la tête)

Le parti national-socialiste avait fait un fameux cadeau à ces SS-là : ils pouvaient marcher au combat sans aucun risque physique, décrocher les honneurs sans avoir à entendre siffler les balles. L'impunité psychologique était plus difficile à atteindre. Tous les officiers SS avaient des camarades qui s'étaient suicidés. Le haut commandment avait pondu des circulaires pour dénoncer ces pertes futiles : il fallait être simple d'esprit pour croire que les juifs, parce qu'ils n'avaient pas de fusils, ne possédaient pas d'armes d'un autre calibre : des armes sociales, économiques et politiques. En fait, le juif était armé jusqu'aux dents. Trempez votre caractère dans l'acier, soulignaient les circulaires, car l'enfant juif est une bombe à retardement culturelle, la femme juive, un tissu biologique de toutes les trahisons, le mâle juif, un ennemi plus implacable encore qu'aucun Russe ne saurait l'être. (ch. 20)

l'Histoire a plus d'imagination que les hommes ? le Diable plus que l'Histoire ? et il n'est pas du genre, le Diable, à commettre l'erreur d'amateur de nous resservir un génocide en tous points semblable à l'étalon du genre ? (ch. 57 La Shoah au coeur et dans la tête)

The ground is still filled iwth rings, and money, and pictures, and Jewish things. I was only able to find a few of them, but they fill the earth." The hero did not ask me once what she was saying. I am not certain if he knew what she was saying, or if he knew not to inquire.

Le Mahatma Gandhi, que j'admire beaucoup, a dit : "Si tu rends oeil pour oeil, le monde deviendra aveugle." Je voudrais, quant à moi, dessiller les yeux des hommes plutôt qu'augmenter leur cécité ou leur indifférence devant les injustices.

To paraphrase Hannah Arendt—as portrayed in the recently released movie of the same name—the Nazi war criminal’s actions stemmed from her well-known phrase “banality of evil,” not as a result of mental illness but as a result of a lack of thinking. Their greatest error was delegating the process of thinking and decision-making to their higher ups. In Rudolf Höss’s case, this would have been his superiors, particularly Heinrich Himmler. To many this conclusion is troubling, for it suggests that if everyday, “normal,” sane men and women are capable of evil, then the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust and other genocides could be repeated today and into the future. Yet, this is exactly the lesson we must learn from the war criminals at Nuremberg. We must be ever wary of those who do not take responsibility for their actions. And we ourselves must be extra vigilant, particularly in this day of accelerated technological power, heightened state surveillance, and global corporate reach, that we do not delegate our thinking to others.

How could a cultivated nation like Germany unleash a murderous frenzy against the Jewish people? Many authors have described the killings. A few authors have warned that explaining is in itself a profanation. But Dan McMillan takes a different course. With eloquence and clarity he sets the Shoah in a broad historical context. McMillan shows how step by step, ideas and institutions came into place in western nations, especially in Germany, that made the killings conceivable, then possible, and even likely, but never inevitable. This book is an impressive achievement.

What does it really matter?’ is a line we like to associate with bourgeois callousness, but it is the line most likely to make the individual aware, without dread, of the insignificance of his existence. The inhuman part of it, the ability to keep one’s distance as a spectator and to rise above things, is in the final analysis the human part, the very part resisted by its ideologists.

From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and ‘work-shy’ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease.  Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered.  The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help ‘asocial’ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as ‘fighters’ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials.  As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials’ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans’ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of ‘Get off my patch'.

At every stage of the Holocaust decisions had to be made. It is a phenomenon filled with individual initiatives, as the perpetrators were not simply cogs in a machine operating according to preordained rules. Far from it. What this means is that agency in the Shoah, to a degree we perhaps have not yet adequately recognized when thinking and writing about it, rests with a multitude of individuals. and there were, ipso facto, many chokepoints where their initiative could have been slowed down, temporarily halted, even derailed. This was a significant and viable alternative, because from a certain point on it was clear that the Nazis were going to lose the war. Consequently, to say that nothing could have been done once the Nazi policy of killing all the Jews had been set in motion is incorrect. Plenty of people could have done something, or, as it were, not done something. With the result that hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives could have been saved.

Not coincidentally, another who noted their extermination was Hitler, who had a first-hand witness of it among his closest associates in Munich. The former German consul in Erzerum, Max von Scheubner-Richter, reported to his superiors in detail on the ways they were wiped out. A virulent racist, who became manager of the early Nazi Kampfbund and the party’s key liaison with big business, aristocracy and the church, he fell to a shot while holding hands with Hitler in the Beerhall putsch of 1923. ‘Had the bullet which killed Scheubner-Richter been a foot to the right, history would have taken a different course,’ Ian Kershaw remarks. Hitler mourned him as ‘irreplaceable’. Invading Poland 16 years later, he would famously ask his commanders, referring to the Poles, but with obvious implications for the Jews: ‘Who now remembers the Armenians?’ The Third Reich did not need the Turkish precedent for its own genocides. But that Hitler was well aware of it, and cited its success to encourage German operations, is beyond question. Whoever has doubted the comparability of the two, it was not the Nazis themselves.

Que la langue du génocide ne doive, à aucun prix, se galvauder ; que veiller sur la probité des mots en général et de celui-ci en particulier soit une tâche intellectuelle et politique prioritaire ; qu'il se soit produit à Auschwitz, un événement sans précédent, incomparable à tout autre et que la lutte contre la banalisation, et de la chose, et du mot qui la désigne, soit un impératif, non seulement pour les Juifs, mais pour tous ceux que lèse ce crime (autrement dit, l'humain comme tel ; l'humain en chaque homme, chaque femme, d'aujourd'hui) ; que la Shoah soit le génocide absolu, l'étalon du genre, la mesure même du non-humain ; que cette singularité tienne tant à l'effroyable rationalité des méthodes (bureaucratie, industrie du cadavre, chambre à gaz) qu'à sa non moins terrible part d'irrationalité (l'histoire folle, souvent notée, des trains de déportés qui avaient, jusqu'au dernier jour, priorité sur les convois d'armes et de troupes), à sa systématicité (des armées de tueurs lâchés, dans toute l'Europe, à la poursuite de Juifs qui devaient être traqués, exterminés sans reste, jusqu'au dernier) ou à sa dimension, son intention métaphysique (par-delà les corps les âmes et, par-delà les âmes, la mémoire même des textes juifs et de la loi) - tout cela est évident ; c'est et ce sera de plus en plus difficile à faire entendre, mais c'est établi et évident... (ch. 57 La Shoah au coeur et dans la tête)

Поряд із цим чеснотливим забуттям або замість нього може існувати інше забуття, якому чеснота не властива. Прощення звичайно дається, коли його просять у Бога і в жертви, коли провину попередньо визнають і сформулюють прохання. Якщо цих умов не виконано, а прощення однаково дається, і то однобічно, є велика ймовірність, що воно нічого не варте і стане ще однією провиною. Таке занадто легке прощення може походити від якогось піднесеного морального кредо, що дешево цінує справедливість і дозволяє його носієві хизуватися величчю своєї душі. Воно може походити й від браку сміливости перед вимогами справедливости, або від небажання досліджувати свою активну чи пасивну співучасть із тими, кому легко прощаєш, бо водночас відпускаєш і свої гріхи, не зізнаючись у них. Тут не видно, щоб хтось готувався до публічної церемонії каяття з цього приводу.

How many rapes occurred inside the walls of the main camp of Ravensbrück is hard to put a figure to: so many of the victims—already, as Ilse Heinrich said, half dead—did not survive long enough after the war to talk about it. While many older Soviet women were reluctant to talk of the rape, younger survivors feel less restraint today. Nadia Vasilyeva was one of the Red Army nurses who were cornered by the Germans on the cliffs of the Crimea. Three years later in Neustrelitz, northwest of Ravensbrück, she and scores of other Red Army women were cornered again, this time by their own Soviet liberators intent on mass rape. Other women make no excuses for the Soviet rapists. ‘They were demanding payment for liberation,’ said Ilena Barsukova. ‘The Germans never raped the prisoners because we were Russian swine, but our own soldiers raped us. We were disgusted that they behaved like this. Stalin had said that no soldiers should be taken prisoner, so they felt they could treat us like dirt.’ Like the Russians, Polish survivors were also reluctant for many years to talk of Red Army rape. ‘We were terrified by our Russian liberators,’ said Krystyna Zając. ‘But we could not talk about it later because of the communists who had by then taken over in Poland.’ Nevertheless, Poles, Yugoslavs, Czechs and French survivors all left accounts of being raped as soon as they reached the Soviet lines. They talked of being ‘hunted down’, ‘captured’ or ‘cornered’ and then raped. In her memoirs Wanda Wojtasik, one of the rabbits, says it was impossible to encounter a single Russian without being raped. As she, Krysia and their Lublin friends tried to head east towards their home, they were attacked at every turn. Sometimes the approach would begin with romantic overtures from ‘handsome men’, but these approaches soon degenerated into harassment and then rape. Wanda did not say she was raped herself, but describes episodes where soldiers pounced on friends, or attacked them in houses where they sheltered, or dragged women off behind trees, who then reappeared sobbing and screaming. ‘After a while we never accepted lifts and didn’t dare go near any villages, and when we slept someone always stood watch.

Continuo a pensare, a pensare, e comincia a sembrarmi che le persone sensibili e intelligenti che vivranno dopo di noi, se poi ce ne saranno, faticheranno a capire come tutto ciò sia potuto accadere, stenteranno a capire la nascita dell’idea stessa dell’omicidio, e a maggior ragione dell’omicidio di massa. Uccidere. In che senso? Perché? Come può annidarsi, questa idea, negli oscuri anfratti delle circonvoluzioni cerebrali di un comune essere umano, nato da una madre, un essere che è stato un bambino che succhiava al seno, che andava a scuola?… Comune come milioni di altri, con mani e piedi sui quali crescono le unghie, mentre sulle guance - se per esempio si tratta di un uomo - cresce la barba, un essere che si affligge, sorride, si guarda allo specchio, ama teneramente una donna, si brucia con un fiammifero, e per quel che lo riguarda non ha nessuna voglia di morire - insomma, comune in tutto, tranne che per una patologica mancanza di immaginazione. Un essere umano normale capisce che non solo lui, ma anche gli altri vogliono vivere. Alla vista, o anche solo al pensiero delle altrui sofferenze, s’immedesima, in ogni caso prova almeno un dolore morale. E alla fine non riuscirà ad alzare la mano per colpire”.

Chiar și când nu era vreo cădere de tensiune trăiam într-o lumină slabă, pentru că era important să faci economie: părinții mei înlocuiau becurile de 40 de wați cu unele de 25, nu doar pentru a face economie, ci din principiu, pentru că lumina puternică e risipă, iar risipa e imorală. Apartamentul nostru micuț era întotdeauna ticsit cu suferințele întregii omeniri. Copiii care mureau de foame în India, de dragul cărora eram eu silit să mănânc tot ce mi se punea în farfurie. Supraviețuitorii infernului lui Hitler, pe care englezii ii deportaseră în lagăre din Cipru. Orfanii zdrențăroși care încă mai bântuiau prin pădurile copleșite de zăpadă din Europa în ruine. Tata lucra la biroul lui până la două dimineața, la lumina unui bec anemic de 25 de wați, chinuindu-și ochii, pentru că nu i se părea corect sa folosească o lumină mai puternică: pionierii din kibbutzurile Galileii ședeau în corturile lor noapte de noapte scriind cărți de poezii sau tratate filozofice la lumina unor lumânări ce picurau, și cum ai putea să uiți de ei și să șezi aici ca Rothschild, la un bec orbitor de 40 de wați? Şi ce-ar zice vecinii dacă ar vedea dintr-odată la noi lumină ca într-o sală de bal? Mai bine să-și distrugă vederea decât să atragă privirile furișe ale celorlalți. Nu ne număram printre cei mai nevoiași. Slujba pe care o avea tata la Biblioteca Națională îi aducea un salariu modest, dar regulat. Mama dădea meditații. Eu udam în fiecare vineri grădina domnului Cohen din Tel Arza, pentru un șiling, iar miercurea mai câștigam patru piaștri pentru că așezam sticlele goale în lăzi, în dosul băcăniei domnului Auster, și pe lângă astea îl învățam pe fiul doamnei Finster să citească o hartă, cu doi piaștri pe lecție (dar asta era pe credit, și nici până în ziua de azi nu m-au plătit Finsterii). În ciuda tuturor acestor surse de venit, făceam tot timpul economii. Viața din apartamentul nostru micuț semăna cu viața dintr-un submarin, așa cum se arăta într-un film pe care l-am văzut cândva la cinematograful Edison, unde marinarii închideau după ei o trapă ori de câte ori treceau dintr-un compartiment în altul. În clipa în care aprindeam cu o mână lumina la baie, stingeam cu cealaltă lumina de pe coridor, ca să nu irosesc curentul. Trăgeam lanțul ușurel, pentru că nu se cuvenea să golești toată Niagara din rezervor pentru un pipi. Erau alte funcții (pe care nu le numeam niciodată) care puteau justifica, uneori, golirea completă a rezervorului. Dar pentru un pipi? Toată Niagara? În vreme ce pionierii din Negev păstrau apa cu care se spălaseră pe dinți pentru udatul plantelor? În vreme în lagărele din Cipru o întreagă familie trebuia să se descurce cu o găleată de apă timp de trei zile? Când plecam de la toaletă stingeam lumina cu mâna stângă și în aceeași clipă aprindeam lumina de pe coridor cu dreapta, pentru că Shoah a fost doar ieri, pentru că erau încă evrei fără adăpost care bântuiau prin Carpați și Dolomiți, lâncezeau prin lagărele de deportare și pe corăbii greoaie, gata-gata să se scufunde, scheletici, acoperiți de zdrențe, și pentru că și prin alte părți ale lumii erau greutăți și sărăcie: culii din China, culegătorii de bumbac din Mississippi, copiii din Africa, pescarii din Sicilia. Era de datoria noastră să nu fim risipitori.

Se descermos até à cave, se descermos até às profundezas, encontramos velhos amigos de quem nos esquecemos, que nos abraçam. Por uns breves momentos tudo é como deveria ter sido.

[On kneeling down at the Warsaw Ghetto Monument during his 1970 state visit to Poland:] "Es war eine ungewöhnliche Last, die ich auf meinem Weg nach Warschau mitnahm. Nirgends hatte das Volk, hatten die Menschen so gelitten wie in Polen. Die maschinelle Vernichtung der polnischen Judenheit stellte eine Steigerung der Mordlust dar, die niemand für möglich gehalten hatte. [...] Ich hatte nichts geplant, aber Schloß Wilanow, wo ich untergebracht war, in dem Gefühl verlassen, die Besonderheit des Gedenkens am Ghetto-Monument zum Ausdruck bringen zu müssen. Am Abgrund der deutschen Geschichte und unter der Last der Millionen Ermordeten tat ich, was Menschen tun, wenn die Sprache versagt. Ich weiß es auch nach zwanzig Jahren nicht besser als jener Berichterstatter, der festhielt: 'Dann kniet er, der das nicht nötig hat, für alle, die es nötig haben, aber nicht knien – weil sie es nicht wagen oder nicht können oder nicht wagen können.'" ("I took an extraordinary burden to Warsaw. Nowhere else had a people suffered as much as in Poland. The robotic mass annihilation of the Polish Jews had brought human blood lust to a climax which nobody had considered possible. [...] Although I had made no plans, I left my accommodations at Wilanow Castle feeling that I was called upon to mark in some way the special moment of commemoration at the Ghetto Monument. At the abyss of German history and burdened by millions of murdered humans, I acted in the way of those whom language fails. Even twenty years later, I wouldn't know better than the journalist who recorded the moment by saying, 'Then he, who would not need to do this, kneels down in lieu of all those who should, but who do not kneel down – because they do not dare, cannot kneel, or cannot dare to kneel.'") [Note: The quotation used by Brandt is from the article Ein Stück Heimkehr [A Partial Homecoming] (Hermann Schreiber/ Der Spiegel No. 51/1970, Dec. 14, 1970]

My rabbis taught me that it was wrong to say God caused the Holocaust; that he simply, in 1938, turned His head. He looked away.

During World War II, Americans had no framework with which to understand the Nazis' attempted annihilation of European Jews, and no word - not 'Holocaust,' 'Shoah,' or, until December 1944, 'genocide' - to understand the crime. To them, rumors of villages being wiped out seemed a particularly brutal component of the war, and in war civilians die. Americans knew that Nazi ideology always held a special hatred for the Jews, so isolated stories about Jews being murdered were fathomable. But an actual extermination plan was not. It took time to realize that such stories were not only different - separate from wartime propaganda about the cruelty of the enemy - but also true.

La Shoah ha posto alla fede, secondo Leon Ashkenazi, due importanti questioni.

The high profile now enjoyed by the Holocaust or Shoah in public memory of the Second World War has contributed to the assumption that a major factor in waging the war against Germany and its European Axis allies was to end the genocide and liberate the remaining Jewish populations. This is largely an illusion. The war was not fought to save Europe’s Jews, and indeed the governments of all three major Allied powers worried lest the public should think this to be the case. Liberation when it came was a by-product of a broader ambition to expel the Axis states from their conquests and to restore the national sovereignty of all conquered and victimized peoples. Towards the Jews, the attitude of the Allied powers was by turns negligent, cautious, ambivalent or morally questionable.

Maybe there is still some hope. If man is indeed made in the image of God, as I believed in the pre-Auschwitz days, maybe there are still some godly sparks left in men and some humanity in God.

Once hidden in a cellar beside a corpse laid out like a sheet of paper Illuminated by phosphorous snow from the ceiling-I wrote a poem with a piece of coal On the paper body of my neighbor.

Its genesis: inside the kingdom of night, I witnessed a strange trial. Three rabbis-all erudite and pious men-decided one winter evening to indict God for allowing his children to be massacred, I remember: I was there, and I felt like crying. But there nobody cried.

If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.

Geh zurück in dein eigenes Leben, und schau nicht zurück. Ich möchte nicht, dass du Schaden nimmst. Da, Lungen atmen Gaskammerdämpfe. Da, Liebe schreit in der Nacht aus den Kehlen der Krematoriumschlote. Da, der Wind trägt die Asche verbrannter Beine mit sich, Beine die einst so lang und anmutig waren wie deine; Asche von einem Körper wie deinem, geschmeidig und eben erblüht; die Asche eines Gesichts wie des deinen, von Lippen wie deinen. Nur der Blick dieser Augen, leuchtend wie der Glanz deiner Augen, schwebt hier noch unverbrannt. Wie willst du diese Luft atmen?

Israel’s formation, the light out of the Shoah’s darkness, has long been held up as an uplifting coda to the Holocaust, an exemplar of the long arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.

Even in those days I was struck by a thought which I confess has more of a hold on me than moral outrage about the great crime. It is the absurdity of the whole thing, of the senselessness and waste of those murders and deportations which we call Holocaust, Shoah, “Final Solution” (in quotation marks), the Jewish catastrophe – new terms, one after the other, because the words decay even as we use them. The irrationality of it all, how easily it could have been prevented, how nobody profited from my carrying rails for a railroad that was never finished, instead of attending school. Again and again I think: chance, accident. I know as much as the next person how this catastrophic breakdown of what we took for European civilization came about, but the historical backdrop doesn't really explain how a 12-year old girl ended up in Christianstadt, sentenced to do men's work, and of course doing it poorly, so that her contribution to the war effort was worthless to the exploiters. Our explanations amount to no more than a shopping list of previous events. And the sum under the bottom line is made to be the inevitable result of what stands above.

That was 1911. Within forty years, the West would stand by and watch as a third of the Jewish people were consumed. I think of the fury the Shoah’s survivors must have felt, the rage at their oppressors, at the bystanders, and then, finally, at the humanistic impulse that made them think anyone else would ever care.

«Anch’io la vedevo così un tempo,» rispose Roni «ora basta, abbiamo uno Stato, funziona bene. Non bisogna più realizzare il sogno sionista. Non bisogna più sopravvivere alla Shoah. Perché non divertirsi e basta? Cosa c’è, dobbiamo andare in cerca di ideali e obiettivi più grandi solo perché i vecchi del kibbutz hanno costruito uno Stato? Che diavolo! È per questo che ho lasciato quella fottuta unità scelta. Lì tutti pensavano che bisognasse agire, combattere, conquistare. Basta. Guardatevi intorno, è tutto ok, è tutto tranquillo. Godersi la vita è permesso».

Da ogni luogo arrivano notizie dei morti: P. è finito al campo; K. è morta in una piccola stazione ferroviaria, l'hanno presa per strada e se la sono portata. La gente muore in tutte le maniere, per qualsiasi motivo. Sembra che ormai non viva più nessuno, che non ci sia niente su cui basarsi, nulla in cui perseverare. Ovunque c'è morte. Nei sotterranei delle cappelle dei cimiteri, le casse mortuarie stanno in lunghe file e attendono il loro turno per essere messe sotto terra. Dinanzi all'enormità della morta in massa, la morte individuale, pure e semplice, sembra qualcosa di inammissibile. Ma la cosa più vergognosa di tutte è la vita.

When trivial matters arising from the subconscious normality of life become matters to which we devote more time than not we must cherish the benefits and fortune of that normality and thank our gods we are not the helpless victims of a holocaust.

I can’t recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can’t explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal.

The Shoah involved millions of people, it was a unique experience for each of them.

So yesterday the high-ranking visitors came after all. . . H[immler} at their head. A slight, insignificant-looking little man, with a rather good-humored face. High peaked cap, mustache, and small spectacles. I think: If you wanted to trace back all the misery and horror to just one person, it would have to be him. Around him a lot of fellows with weary faces. Very big, heavily dressed men, they swerve along whichever way he turns, like a swarm of flies, changing places among themselves (they don't stand still for a moment) and moving like a single whole. It makes a fatally alarming impression. (January 30, 1944)

J’ai déjà dit que la Communauté juive s’était chargée de recruter les travailleurs pour le service obligatoire afin d’épargner à la population la terreur des rafles. Chaque jour, les autorités allemandes lui communiquaient les instructions concernant le nombre d’hommes à fournir et le lieux où ceux-ci devaient se rendre. La Communauté envoyait des convocations aux personnes désignées. Ces billets indiquaient la date de la prestation et portaient l’avertissement suivant : les requis qui ne se présenteraient pas seraient signalés immédiatement à la police et sévèrement punis. Les rassemblements se faisaient à six heures du matin devant l’immeuble de la Communauté ou place Grzybow. Des chefs d’équipe permanents inscrivaient les ouvriers et les accompagnaient sur les chantiers sous la garde de soldats allemands. En décembre 1939, une nouvelle ordonnance obligea tous les Juifs de sexe masculin, âgés de douze à soixante ans, à se faire procéder à leur enregistrement. Tout homme inscrit reçut une carte portant sa photographie et mentionnant son identité, sa profession, ses occupations. Chaque mois, il lui fallait faire timbrer cette carte au bureau de la Communauté. Celui qui exerçait un travail régulier devait, en outre, verser au moins 20 zlotys à chaque vérification de sa fiche. Grâce à cette taxe, il était plus ou moins assuré de travailler à l’intérieur de la ville. Les Juifs sans emploi étaient portés sur la liste des « bataillons de travailleurs » envoyés, en général, dans des camps, à l’extérieur de la ville ; ils subissaient là l’enfer de l’esclavage, des souffrances morales et physiques ainsi que les pires humiliations. Ces bataillons de travailleurs étaient habituellement chargés de la construction des routes, de l’élargissement et de la consolidation des berges de la Vistule. Ils travaillaient comme de véritables bagnards. Des milliers d’entre eux ne revinrent jamais. Lorsqu’un requis n’obéissait pas à la convocation, la police arrêtait une personne de son entourage - souvent un malade ou un vieillard. Le ghetto faisait partie intégrante du mécanisme économique de l’appareil de guerre nazi. Des Allemands, comme Tebenz, mirent sur pied dans le ghetto même de gigantesques fabriques où l’on confectionna des vêtements militaires et civils dans les étoffes d’excellente qualité volées par les Allemands dans toute la Pologne. Un Allemand de Dantzig, Shulz, qui avant la guerre traitait des affaires avec des Juifs polonais, ouvrit rue Nowolipie plusieurs ateliers où l’on travailla le cuir et la fourrure. Leszczinsky, un Polonais, monta rue Ogrodowa de vastes ateliers d’habillement. Une société commerciale composée d’Allemands, de Volksdeutschen, de Polonais et de Juifs entreprit la fabrication d’articles de brosserie. La matière première fut fournie par les autorités allemandes. La production était utilisée généralement pour les besoins militaires et, peut-être, en partie, pour satisfaire la demande de milieux privés ayant quelque attache avec l’armée. Dans ces usines ne travaillèrent que des Juifs du ghetto. Leur nombre atteignit plusieurs dizaines de milliers. Chez Tebenz les effectifs, au début de 1943, dépassèrent quinze mille ouvriers. Leur salaire était infime. Chaque ouvrier avait droit à deux litres de soupe par jour au prix de 60 à 70 groschen ; sa condition était celle d’un esclave.

De tout cela, je discutais une fois par semaine avec mon psychanalyste à Zurich. Nous parlions de Staline, de la Shoah et des fosses communes tandis que d'autres profitaient de leur pause-déjeuner pour engloutir des pizzas. Tout récemment, je lui avais demandé : « Mais au fait, suis-je véritablement malade ? » « Comment voulez-vous que je le sache ? » m'avait-il répondu. ~ P12

I can’t recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can’t explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal. Ralph Webster, A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other

Memory is like throwing a stone into water. There are ripples.

I did not cry. I became like a robot, a child of silence. This is how I could survive, by not allowing myself to feel.

To his credit, Kosinski did undergo a kind of deathbed conversion. In the few years between his exposure and his suicide, Kosinski deplored the Holocaust industry’s exclusion of non-Jewish victims. “Many North American Jews tend to perceive it as Shoah, as an exclusively Jewish disaster. . . . But at least half of the world’s Romanies (unfairly called Gypsies), some 2.5 million Polish Catholics, millions of Soviet citizens and various nationalities, were also victims of this genocide. . . .” He also paid tribute to the “bravery of the Poles” who “sheltered” him “during the Holocaust” despite his so-called Semitic “looks.

Che il buon Dio ci protegga da loro" mormorava la madre, "hanno infettato perfino questo buco fangoso e ignorante. Il mondo è malato, figli miei. Il male ha contagiato tutta l'Europa, ma non abbiate paura, Dio non ci abbandonerà a questi cani rabbiosi che incitano anche la brava gente ai crimini più nefasti.

Le pillage et la spoliation des biens culturels ont été un rouage important de la Shoah. Aujourd’hui encore, il apparaît nécessaire de marteler qu’ils ont été un des corollaires de la politique de persécution mise en place par les ordonnances des autorités d’occupation, mais également par les lois du gouvernement de Vichy. Il est même fondamental de transmettre cette vérité à la jeune génération, bien souvent ignorante des réalités de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

he’s quite fixated on forestalling the Shoah.

The pulse of history beats in every family. All of our lives are engraved with epics of love and death. What my family gained and lost in the twentieth century, though extreme, was not unique. War has touched all of us. Fate and chance and character make and break every generation. The Shoah was not the only genocide. America is not the first land of opportunity nor will it be the last. Warring peoples have fought over the Holy Land for thousands of years, all of them claiming to have God on their side. In a family history written by Palestinian Arabs, Chaim and Sonia and their fellow Zionists would be oppressors; the Koran, not the Torah, would be the holy book; Jerusalem would be a besieged, stolen city. Open the book of your family and you will be amazed, as I was, at what you find.

Extra thanks to Aron, for bringing my story to millions of TikTok viewers and for educating many young people who would otherwise not have heard about the Shoah.

The Holocaust is the lowest humankind has ever sunk. There had been massacres and genocide in the past. There had never been industrial-scale human slaughterhouses before. It was the perfect storm of absolute power inciting rabble-rousing hatred combined with advanced technology and the urge to kill in the primitive recesses of the human mind. I hope that the world never descends to that level of barbarity again. I fear that history's darkest stain will be deepened and surpassed in the future.

As we shall see, for the rest of her life, the Shoah—as she [Angela Merkel] has always referred to the Holocaust—would be central to her leadership and to her conviction that Germany’s debt to the Jewish people was permanent.

Enlightenment thought has reconfigured the Shoah as a collective swindle; enlightenment became mass fraud.

Shoah,

The growth of Israeli influence in Europe presents a curious historical milestone and an unresolved contradiction. After the annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust, Germany has become the most consistently pro-Israel nation on the continent and is Israel’s biggest trading partner in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Israel in October 2021 on one of her final overseas visits before leaving office; it was her eighth trip during her sixteen years in power. She did not travel to the West Bank or Gaza. She praised the Jewish state, despite acknowledging that Israel did not embrace her favored two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, but this did not matter because “the topic of Israel’s security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government.” It was an emotional connection, Merkel stressed, and one rooted in historical reconciliation and forgiveness. “The fact that Jewish life has found a home again in Germany after the crimes of humanity of the Shoah is an immeasurable sign of trust, for which we are grateful,” she wrote in the guest book at Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial

Almost all Ashkenazi Jews today are the descendants of 300 Jewish individuals who survived numerous genocides by the crusaders in the Middle Ages. Most Ashkenazi Jews today understand the continuous cycle of violent and often genocidal Jew-hatred faced by their families in Central and Eastern Europe, and why they had to flee this region in the 19th and early 20th centuries even before the Shoah.

Merkel brought a set of core values to the office: her deep but private faith, an unshakable creed of duty and service; a belief in Germany’s permanent debt to Jews for what she has always referred to as the Shoah; her scientist’s devotion to precise, evidence-based decision-making; and a visceral loathing of dictators who imprison their own people. Freedom of expression and movement are more than hackneyed phrases for a politician who spent her first thirty-five years lacking both.

The profoundly negationist character of information, the demand for which has no concern for any historical reality or any moral meaning. Shoah or no Shoah, if Hitler were alive he would be on all the screens. Might Network Man be the model for the disabled person of the future? It is perhaps to him, rather than to the paralytic, that we shall have forcibly to restore the use of his body. An illness that breaks out opportunely just before the departure date and ends exactly on the day the trip was scheduled to end.

Chiedi al Bunkerjakob che controllava tutto Come fai a resistere Lui disse Sia lode a quanto rende duri Io sto bene mangio le razioni di quelli là dentro La loro morte non mi tocca Tutto questo mi tocca quanto può toccarmi la pietra di questo muro

The Shoah has been portrayed in scholarly literature as a phenomenon rooted in modernity. We know very well that in order to kill millions of people, an efficient bureaucracy is necessary, along with a (relatively) advanced technology. But the murder of Jedwabne Jews reveals yet another, deeper, more archaic layer of this enterprise. I am referring not only to the motivations of the murderers - after all, Jedwabne residents and peasants from Lomza County could not yet have managed to soak up the vicious anti-Jewish Nazi propoganda, even if they had been willing and ready - but also to primitive, ancient methods and murder weapons: stones, wooden clubs, iron bars, fire, and water; as well as the absence of organization. It is clear, from what happened in Jedwabne, that we must approach the Holocaust as a heterogeneous phenomenon. On the other hand, we have to be able to account for it as a system, which functioned according to a preconceived (though constantly evolving) plan. But, simultaneously, we must also be able to see it as a mosaic composed of discrete episodes, improvised by local decision-makers, and hinging on unforced behavior, rooted in God-knows-what motivations, of all those who were near the murder scene at the time. This makes all the difference in terms of assessing responsibility for the killings, as well as calculating the odds for survival that confronted the Jews.

In private life as well as we have difficulties talking about genocide. When we encounter descriptions of extermination, whatever our temporal distance, our first reaction is to push that knowledge away. Our memory keeps that knowledge in some distant and dark corner, and moves a different history into the forefront: the history of human heroism, of solidarity. The Shoah reminds us not only of death but also of human bestiality. Yet human bestiality is taboo. This is one of the reasons for the constant return to the theme of the inexpressibility of the Shoah: speaking about it is always awkward; the moment for it is never right, the one never proper. The topic is so scorching that touching it can only burn.

Când un bobârnac aleatoriu face să se năruie castelul din cărţi de joc, care s-ar fi putut surpa mult mai devreme sau mult mai târziu, descoperim peisajul postcomunist: mafioţi şi semivagabonzi care nu mai au energie nici măcar să-şi amintească.

L’Dor v’dor, my son, from generation to generation. This is a Jewish tradition . . . It is our responsibility as Jews to pass traditions down from generation to generation, as well. We must keep these traditions alive, so I hope you will carry this with you always and remember your Zayde and his story of the Shoah.

Or are they perhaps different from most other people, at least in some respects and to a certain degree? Looking back, I think these questions have been with me most of my life, as they are with everyone for whom the Shoah was the formative event.

The integration of the Shoah into Europe’s historical awareness made this discourse intolerable. Anti-Semitism is no longer acceptable in the nationalist and conservative right-wing parties that were its guardians for so long.

«Ma io cosa c’entro con questo» è infantile e un po’ furbo, perché significa non voler riconoscere la differenza tra il concetto di colpa e quello di responsabilità. [...] La colpa è un carico morale esclusivamente personale e, a meno che tu non abbia praticato deliberatamente un’ingiustizia o una violenza su qualcuna, ovviamente non è tua. La responsabilità invece è un carico etico collettivo che ci riguarda tutti e tutte, perché le regole che seguiamo ogni giorno reggono la disuguaglianza che viviamo, anche se in misura diversa. La colpa ce l’hai o non ce l’hai. La responsabilità invece te l’assumi se pensi che quelle conseguenze ti riguardino e tu possa fare qualcosa per modificarle in meglio. È in nome della responsabilità, non della colpa, se ogni anno celebriamo la Giornata della memoria delle vittime del nazismo, perché dopo la Shoah dire «Non ho mai messo un ebreo in una camera a gas» non è piú sufficiente: abbiamo capito tutti che occorre lottare quotidianamente contro i focolai del razzismo che ancora permangono nella nostra società. Fuori da questa logica di assunzione della responsabilità, affermare «Non sono maschilista» in fondo significa dire che «Le conseguenze del maschilismo non sono un mio problema e non le devo risolvere io».

thesis that a hierarchical organisation characterised by 1) sufficient distance between one’s own actions and the results of those actions, 2) strong authority and 3) depersonalized internal hierarchical relationships, could recreate the horror of the Shoah seemed totally unacceptable to most observers.

La peur est l'un des phénomènes normaux et passagers de la vie de l'homme. Mais ce fut l'épouvante et le tremblement d'effroi permanent qui ont caractérisé l'état –tout à fait anormal– dans lequel nous avons vécu pendant des années, même après la mort de Staline. La Roumanie étant peut-être le seul pays « socialiste » dans lequel les documents du vingtième Congrès du PCUS et les enseignements qui en découlaient n'avaient pas été débattus et expliqués, le seul pays n'ayant pas entrepris la déstalinisation. (p. 255)

Il y a une nette différence dans le déroulement de la Shoah en Roumanie et en Hongrie. [...] Le bilan de la Shoah Roumanie n'est pas établi avec exactitude : entre 280 000 et 380 000 Juifs roumains et ukrainiens ont péri sous l'administration roumaine, la plupart en Transnistrie. [...] Les pertes juives hongroises s'élèvent à 564 167 personnes soient 297 621 appartenant à la Hongrie du traité de Trianon (environ 100 000 de Budapest) et 266 866 aux territoires annexés (dont la Transylvanie du Nord). (p. 16- 18, préface de Carol Iancu)

Una mentira similar se propaga hoy entre muchas personas que están convencidas de que Israel, un país nacido de las cenizas de la Shoah, no puede perpetrar un genocidio. Los judíos fueron víctimas de un genocidio; Israel nació como respuesta al antisemitismo y como refugio para sus víctimas; por lo tanto, Israel no puede cometer genocidio. [...] Israel sería una verdadera democracia y la ocupación de los territorios palestinos una medida necesaria contra una amenaza vital, o la consecuencia de un despiste, de un exceso –el mencionado síndrome de Nolteen un país amenazado. La inocencia de Israel estaría inscrita en su código genético. La fe implica a veces la negación de la realidad".

Ha surgido una nueva narrativa que convierte a Israel en víctima: el antisionismo es una forma de antisemitismo; el anticolonialismo ha revelado finalmente su matriz antioccidental, fundamentalista y antisemita. Los conspiradores «judeo-bolcheviques» de antaño han pasado a ser la «izquierda proislámica» de hoy. En los últimos meses, esta mitología se ha extendido al igual que lo hicieron las fake news sobre la guerra de 1914.Una inversión de la realidad de este calado no puede quedar sin consecuencias. Combatir el antisemitismo será cada vez más difícil después de haber desfigurado y distorsionado su naturaleza de un modo tan descarado. El riesgo de banalización es muy real: si se puede librar una guerra genocida en nombre de la lucha contra el antisemitismo, muchas personas honradas empezarán a pensar que sería mejor abandonar una causa tan dudosa. Nadie podrá evocar el Holocausto sin despertar sospechas e incredulidad; muchos llegarán a creer que se trata de un mito inventado para defender los intereses de Israel y sus aliados. La memoria de la Shoah como «religión civil» –la sacralización ritual de los derechos humanos a través del recuerdo de las víctimas– perderá todas sus virtudes pedagógicas".