Posted by: Rubyna
in Quotes & Aphorisms (Holocaust Remembrance Day)
Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.
Send
International memorial day on 27 January commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.
Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.
I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day.
We are alive. We are human, with good and bad in us. That's all we know for sure. We can't create a new species or a new world. That's been done. Now we have to live within those boundaries. What are our choices? We can despair and curse, and change nothing. We can choose evil like our enemies have done and create a world based on hate. Or we can try to make things better.
My faceless neighbor spoke up:
"Don't be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve."
I exploded:
"What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?
His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily:
" I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people. "
If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.
Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.
For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who stop to consider the antithesis; that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
Never.
The deeds were monstrous, but the doer--at least, the very effective one now on trial--was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither monstrous nor demonic.