If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life — mine or that of my fellow man — is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

It was the beginning of the war. I was twelve years old, my parents were alive, and God still dwelt in our town.

Those who know don’t talk and those who talk don’t know.

You’re at the bottom of the mountain. May you climb up without suffering.

Had the situation not been so tragic, we might have laughed.

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.

War is like night, she said. It covers everything.

Humanity would never tolerate it

You shouldn’t act as a spokesperson for someone who’s trying to impose his will on you.

In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

Life is really fascinated only by death. It vibrates only when it comes in contact with death.

This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

A word is worth a thousand pictures.

Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible.

To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice

Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking, loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning.

A man can laugh while he suffers.

I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake.

When you listen to a witness, you become a witness.

It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.

We are all brothers and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.

The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become the bow. He was playing his life…He played that which he would never play again.

I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I’ve been closer to him for that reason.

And action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.

The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other.

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.

Every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer

Questions outlive the answers.

The more you ask certain questions, the more dangerous they become.

Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don’t know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves.

I have tried to keep memory alive… I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?

Bite your lips, little brother…Don’t cry. Keep your anger, your hate, for another day, for later. The day will come but not now…Wait. Clench your teeth and wait…

Not all games are innocent. Some come dangerously close to cruelty.

Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.

The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria…

Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to life as long as God himself

I believe in God–in spite of God! I believe in Mankind–in spite of Mankind! I believe in the Future–in spite of the Past!

Life belongs to man, but the meaning of life is beyond him.

Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

Some stories are true that never happened.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.

Peace is our gift to each other.

I’ve been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.

Bread, soup – these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

God is God because he remembers.

Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.

In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.

No human being is illegal.

Music does not replace words, it gives tone to the words

I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

Love makes everything complicated.

I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it . . .

Indifference is the sign of sickness, a sickness of the soul more contagious than any other.

Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.

They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. 

I don’t want my past to become anyone else’s future.

We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.

One more stab to the heart, one more reason to hate. One less reason to live.

Think higher, feel deeper.

Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.

I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.