Simon Wiesenthal Quotations

Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what I can do for those who have not survived.

Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals.

Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.

The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.

The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat. So information is a defence. Through this we can build, we must build, a defence against repetition.

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.

What connects two thousand years of genocide? Too much power in too few hands.

When history looks back, I want people to know that the Nazis could not kill millions of people with impunity.

There is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today... they are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes possible the resurrection of these two monsters.

Violence is like a weed - it does not die even in the greatest drought.

God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.

Justice for crimes against humanity must have no limitations.

I know I am not only the bad conscience of the Nazis. I am also the bad conscience of the Jews. Because what I have taken up as my duty was everybody's duty.

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.

The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest danger threatening mankind.

The end was surely near. The Nazis killed you only when you were naked, because they knew, psychologically, that naked people never resist.

Technology without hatred can be a blessing. Technology with hatred is always a disaster.

We know that we are not collectively guilty, so how can we accuse any other nation, no matter what some of its people have done, of being collectively guilty?

When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, 'What have you done?' there will be many answers. You will say, 'I became a jeweler.' Another will say, 'I smuggled coffee and American cigarettes.' Another will say, 'I built houses.' But I will say, 'I didn't forget you.'  

The only value of nearly five decades of my work is a warning to the murderers of tomorrow, that they will never rest.

Should history repeat itself, my example will repeat itself too...and not once, but fifty-fold.

If all of us forgot, the same thing might happen again, in 20 or 50 or 100 years,

When history looks back I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it,

We thought we were going mad, ... Perhaps we feared (or hoped) we were mad already.

to expose the plight of black slaves in Sudan and Mauritania, where today tens of thousands of black people still suffer the scourge of slavery.

He did not want to be buried in Austria, as he was afraid his grave will be mutilated.

I'm here to assure you that our city is prepared to handle these situations, ... Power was restored to the vast majority of D.W.P. customers, 90 percent, within the first two hours.

I was over four years in different camps with people from 15 nations: Jews, Gentiles, Gypsies, communists. Through this experience, my view on the Holocaust and the whole problem of Nazism is a lot different from Elie Wiesel, who was only six months in camps and only with Jews.

You drew such a positive profile of me from this sample that I can only say: I like it!

(The ruling is) a victory of history over hate, ... Today's decision definitely places Irving where he belongs -- not as a historian, but as a leading apologist for those who seek to whitewash the most heinous crime in human history.

deeply hurt because Kreisky and I are leaves of the same tree.

That, ... is why the neo-Nazis had to do anything they could to question its authenticity.

The National Socialist (Nazi) party had 10 million members, of whom at most 150,000 were criminals. It would be grotesque to stick the label of criminal on every former member of the party.

I have never stated that 'there were no extermination camps on German soil.' This quote is false, I could never have said such a thing.

I have received many honors in my lifetime, ... When I die, these honors will die with me. But the Simon Wiesenthal Center will live on as my legacy.

Come, let us do honor to the man who has always honored us.

Simon Wiesenthal told me that any political party in a democracy that uses the word 'freedom' in its name is either Nazi or Communist.

What happened to the Jews cannot be compared with all the other crimes. Every Jew had a death sentence without a date.

Even before I had had time to really think things through, I realized we must not forget. If all of us forgot, the same thing might happen again, in 20 or 50 or 100 years.

Hatred can be nurtured anywhere, idealism can be perverted into sadism anywhere. If hatred and sadism combine with modern technology the inferno could erupt anew anywhere.

No gassing took place in any camp on Germany soil.

None of my 'clients' - not Eichmann, not Stangl, not Mengele, and not even Hitler or Stalin - was born a criminal. Somebody had to teach them to hate: maybe the society, maybe the politics, maybe just a Jewish prostitute.

Human rights is the only ideology that deserves to survive

The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.

If you know from history the danger, then part of the danger is over because it may not take you by surprise as it did your ancestors.

Technology without hate can be so beneficial for mankind, but in conjunction with hatred, it leads to disaster.

I have lost my mother, my father, my five, and ninety relatives in Poland. Poland is for me a cemetery.

Forgetting is something that time takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision.

My cause was justice, not vengeance. My work is for a better tomorrow and a more secure future for our children and grandchildren.

There were millions of such families anxious only for peace and quiet in their own little nests. These were the mounting blocks by which the criminals climbed to power and kept it.

Tolerance and human rights require each other.

Freedom is not a gift of heaven, you have to fight for it every day

For me the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy. After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together - many of them only because they helped Jews.

There is no freedom without justice.

When history looks back, I want people to know the Nazis weren't able to kill millions of people and get away with it.

You're a religious man, ... You believe in God and life after death. I also believe. When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, 'What have you done?' there will be many answers. You will say, 'I became a jeweler.' Another will say, 'I smuggled coffee and American cigarettes.' Another will say, 'I built houses.' But I will say, 'I didn't forget you.'

The end was surely near, ... The Nazis killed you only when you were naked, because they knew, psychologically, that naked people never resist.