Wladyslaw Bartoszewski Quotes

Nauczylem sie, ze gdy idzie o realizacje slusznych celow nalezy odsunac na bok roznice, bo moze sie zdarzyc, ze nieustanna dyskusja o tych roznicach przesloni w koncu sam cel.

Ludzie zachowuja sie albo przyzwoicie, albo nieprzyzwoicie. I to jest podzial elementarny. Nauczylo mnie zycie, ze ludzi nie wolno oceniac wedle ich sympatii czy pogladow politycznych, ale wedlug kryterium prawosci. Idzie o sile oporu przed pokusami.

Less than one percent. That’s how many we saved. But the arithmetic, though severe, is important. During the liquidation of the ghetto, 5,000 to 8,000 Jews were taken every day to Treblinka and murdered. During the entire war – more than five years – we saved only 2,500 children. The mathematics of rescue was also severe. To save one Jewish child, ten Poles and two Jews had to risk death. To betray that same child and the family that hid him required only one informer or, worse still, one blackmailer. The risk of being caught by the SS was not prison, but death – death for the entire family. “We all have to ask ourselves, ‘What would I have done?’ But understanding does not erase the regret I feel for my own insufficient efforts. Less than one percent. I agree with Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, one of the organizers of ZEGOTA, who said, ‘Only the dead have done enough.