Quotations from the Holocaust
For me, being a Jew means feeling the tragedy of yesterday as an inner oppression. On my left forearm, I bear the Auschwitz number.
–Jean Amery, survivor
Our immortality comes through our children and their children. Through our roots and branches. The family is immortality. And Hitler has destroyed not just branches and roots, but entire family trees, forests. All of them, gone.
–Amy Harmon, survivor
First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemoller, author
Escape was not our goal since it was so unrealistic. What we wanted was to survive, to live long enough to tell the world what had happened in Buchenwald.
–Jack Werber, survivor
For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.
—Simon Wiesenthal, survivor and author
For your benefit, learn from our tragedy. It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews. It can also be other people. We saw it begin in Germany with Jews, but people from more than twenty other nations were also murdered.
–Simon Wiesenthal, survivor and author
The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were…overpowering…I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’
–General Dwight D. Eisenhower, letter to General George C. Marshall
We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against.
–General Dwight D. Eisenhower, touring Buchenwald
I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.
–Edward R. Murrow, broadcast from Buchenwald
Never forget.
–wording found on several memorials
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