Simon Wiesenthal
14 quotes
Biography
"Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them."
"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.' Still another will say, 'I built houses,' but I will say, 'I didn't forget you.'"
"Survivors should be like seismographs... They should sense danger before others do, identify its outlines and reveal them. They are not entitled to be wrong a second time or regard as harmless something that might lead to catastrophe."
"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."
"There is no freedom without justice."
"Simon Wiesenthal told me that any political party in a democracy that uses the word 'freedom' in its name is either Nazi or Communist."
"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."
"For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing."
"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."
"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."
"For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing."
"Technology without hatred can be a blessing. Technology with hatred is always a disaster."
"The combination of hatred and technology is the greatest danger threatening mankind."
"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."