...the above photograph is Anne Frank's diary found in display case in Amsterdam
the following quotations challenge our thinking --some are directly related to the Holocaust... some indirectly
"If one is rejected because he is uneducated, he can at least be consoled by the fact that it may be possible for him to get an education. If one is rejected because he is low on the economic ladder, he can at least dream of the day that he will rise from his dungeon of economic deprivation. If one is rejected because he speaks with an accent, he can at least, if he desires, work to bring his speech in line with the dominant group. If, however, one is rejected because of his color, he must face the anguishing fact that he is being rejected because of something in himself that cannot be changed. All prejudice is evil, but the prejudice that rejects a man because of the color of his skin is the most despicable expression of man's inhumanity to man." (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)
"In Hitler's Germany a particular code was widespread: those who knew did not talk; those who did not know did not ask questions; those who did ask questions received no answers. In this way the typical German citizen won and defended his ignorance, which seemed to him sufficient justification of his adherence to Nazism. (Primo Levi)
"Whoever saves one life, it is as though he saves the whole universe." (the Talmud)
"...there are two races of men in this world, but only these two --the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race" - and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards." (Viktor Frankl)
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." (Unknown)
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." (Confucius)
"What the people believe is true." (Anishinabe Native American proverb)
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." (Albert Einstein)
"No one has a perfect view of everything." (Le Ly Hayslip)
"All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they." (Rudyard Kipling)
"The world is too dangerous to live in --not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who stand by and let them." (Einstein)
"In Germany they came first for the Communist, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionist, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." (Martin Niemoller)
"The principal that governs the biblical vision of society is, 'Thou shall not stand idly by when your fellow man is hurting, suffering, or being victimized.' It is because that injunction was ignored or violated that the catastrophe involving such multitudes occurred. The victims perished not only because of the killers, but also because of the apathy of the bystanders. Those who perished were victims of Nazism and of society --though to different degrees. What astonished us after the torment, after the tempest, was not that so many killers killed so many victims, but that so few cared about us at all." (Elie Wiesel)
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." (Unknown)
"Indifference is not so much a gesture of looking away --of choosing to be passive --as it is an active disinclination to feel. Indifference shuts down the human, and does it deliberately, with all the strength deliberateness demands. Indifference is as determined --and as forcefully muscular --as any blow." (Cynthia Ozick)
"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." (Plato)
"We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace; thus we offered sacrifices on the altar of war." (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
"One does evil enough when one does nothing good." (German proverb)
"The dead remember our silence. The dead remember our indifference." (Unknown)
"'You will love me nature,' God said. 'I made you that way. You will obey me universe. For you were designed to do so. You will reflect my glory skies, for that is how you were created. But this one will be like me. This one will be able to choose.'" (Max Lucado)
"We are told that at one time Rabbi Hayyim wished to have a glimpse of men's hearts and test their opinions of themselves. He called some passerbys into his house and asked each one: 'Suppose you found a purse full of gold pieces, would you return it to its rightful owner?' ...' Without doubt, I would do so right away provided, of course, I knew who the owner was,' the first one answered. ...'Fool,' said the rabbi. Turning to another with the same question, he was told: 'Of course, not. I am not so stupid as to let a windfall like this out of my hands.' ... ' You scoundrel,' the rabbi exclaimed. A third man, free of delusion and malice replied: 'How can I possibly know, rabbi, what I would be like then? Would I be able to conquer the evil inclination? Or would the evil urge overcome me and make me take what belongs to another? I do not know. But if the Holy One, blessed be He, strengthened me against the evil inclination, I would restore the find.' ...' Your words are beautiful,' the Zanser Rebbe marveled, 'you are wise indeed.' " (John M. Oesterreich)
"Why didn't the Jews do something? To survive under these circumstances where there are no options is 'doing something.'" (from "Social Education")
"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering." (Viktor Frankl)
"People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within." (Elizabeth Kubler Ross)
"Suffering is the origin of consciousness." (Dostoyevsky)
"If heaven was full of paper and the oceans full of ink --I could not express my pain." (spoken by a boy at Auschwitz)
"...but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identify, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it know, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, knows something about self and human life that no school on earth --and indeed, no church --can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakeable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one's bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry." (James Baldwin)
"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." (Kahlil Gibran)
"In Munich on April 15-16, 1946, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Passover was celebrated by survivors of the concentration camps. A survivor who was there said that when it came time for the young to ask the Questions (a traditional part of the Passover), the survivor celebrants, becoming aware that there were no children, fell silent, weeping, until one man began the asking and all the rest joined in." (from "A Survivor's Haggadah")
"Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food, and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influence alone." (VIktor Frankl)
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." (Viktor Frankl)
"Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the idea of duty are things that, when in error, can turn hideous, but --even though hideous --remain great; their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, persists in horror. They are virtues with a single vice --error. Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than this face, which revealed what might be called all the evil of good." (Viktor Hugo)
"The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention." (Unknown)
"Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren't born. Very often the rescuers make only a small commitment at the start, to hide someone for a day or two. But once they had taken that step, they began to see themselves differently, as someone who helps. What starts as mere willingness becomes intense involvement." (Ervin Staub)
"Don't be afraid of the dark, honey," said a mother calming her frightened child..."God is with you." To which the child replied, "But I need somebody with skin on." (Mother Teresa)
"The woman who walked away from her fifteen year old daughter in the group selected for labour and life, choosing instead to keep fast hold of the hand of a four year old girl separated from her parents, was not only a hero --she was clearly that --but unusually prescient, intuiting the meaning of the selections, realizing that she was deciding to die rather than allow a child to go to her death alone." (Inga Clendinnen)
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to enhance all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." (Albert Einstein)
"At best, less than one-half of one percent of the total population (of non-Jews) under Nazi occupation helped to rescue Jews; however, there was that one-half of one percent who did risk their lives to help a human being in need. Why?" (Oliner and Oliner)
"One evening we were served a soup made with semolina. I drank this with all the more relish since I often had to forgo the daily cabbage soup because of my bowels. Just then I noticed a woman, one of the prostitutes, who always kept very much to themselves, approaching my bunk, holding her bowl out to me with both hands. 'Micheline, I think this is a soup you can eat; take mine too.' She emptied her bowl into mine and went without food that day." (Micheline Maurel)
"We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts, comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of his freedoms --to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." (Viktor Frankl)
"...power is not really good or bad; it is neutral. Power itself is not negative or positive, although our feelings may be. Power is the potential to influence others for good or evil, to be a blessing or a scourge. Like nuclear energy, it can provide the electricity to light a city, or it can fuel the bomb that destroys it." (Blaine Lee)
"History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds." (Helen Keller)
"Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less... only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of less hardy makeup often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature." (Viktor Frankl)
"Some battles are won even when they are lost." (Elie Wiesel)
"The rabbis teach us to walk down the road of life with two truths in our pockets. In one pocket hold the truth, 'I am but dust and ashes.' Remember to be humble and willing to learn from others. But in the other pocket carry the truth, 'For my sake was the world created.' You are a reflection of the divine presence in the world. You are infinitely precious, despite your flaws." (Rabbi Marx)
"Men and women in the concentration camps conformed because otherwise they died. But they also resisted, and for the same reason: otherwise they died. As a survivor of Auschwitz put it: 'Oppression as violent as that under which we lived automatically provided resistance. Our entire existence in the camp was marked by it. When the employees of Canada (what they called the buildings where they separated the belongings of those arriving on the trains) detoured items destined for Germany to the benefit of their fellow internees, it was resistance. When labourers at the spinning mills dared to slacken their working pace, it was resistance. When at Christmas we organized a little festival under the noses of our masters, it was resistance. When, clandestinely, we passed letters from one camp to another, it was resistance. When we endeavored, and sometimes with success, to reunite two members of the same family --for example, by substituting one internee for another in a gang of stretcher bearers --it was resistance.'" (Terrence Des Pres)
"When Pharaoh restored the chief butler to his position as foretold by Joseph in his interpretations of the butler's dream, he forgot Joseph. 'Yet did the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgot him.' Why does the Bible use this repetitive language? It is obvious that if the butler forgot Joseph, he did not remember him. Yet, both verbs are used, remembering and forgetting. 'The Bible, in using this language is teaching us a very important lesson,' said the Rabbi of Bluzhov, Rabbi Israel Spira, to his Hasidim. 'There are events of such overbearing magnitude that one ought not to remember them all the time, but one must not forget them either. Such an event is the Holocaust."
"The special gift of that suffering I have learned is how to be strong while we are weak, how to be brave when we are afraid, how to be wise in the midst of confusion, and how to let go of that which we can no longer hold. In this way, anger can teacher forgiveness, hate can teach us love, and war can teach us peace." (Le Ly Hayslip)
"In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again: and in him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility toward human life; towards the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of error, and of God. Every breath his senses shall draw, every act and every shadow and thing in all creation, is a mortal poison, or is a drug, or is a signal or symptom, or is a teacher, or is a liberator, or is liberty itself, depending entirely upon his understanding: and understanding and action, proceeding from understanding and guided by it, is the one weapon against the world's bombardment, the one medicine, the one instrument by which liberty, health, and joy may be shaped or shaped towards, in the individual, and in the race." (James Agee)
"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expressed! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!" (Abraham Lincoln)
"I believe it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still exists a world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage ...something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good for which it was worth surviving. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man." (Primo Levi)
"What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life --daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." (Viktor Frankl)