The Jewish Wisdom Database

No Jews felt more helpless in the face of anti-Semitism than those who had done everything deliberately and enthusiastically to adapt themselves to their environment.

Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. And anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or concious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

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

The ghetto outlook divided the universe into two: this world for the Gentile and the next world for the Jew.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.

Children without a childhood are tragic.