| "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who
walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of
bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that
everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms -
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's
own way." - |
Victor Frankl |
| "In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the
Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for
me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up." - |
Martin Niemöller |
| "Pupils should know that it happened, that it was wrong, and
that it should not happen to anyone else." |
Yitzchak Meyer, TES, 4 July 1997 |
| "Are you just going to show us more pictures of dead Jews
sir?" |
Pupil to student teacher about to teach lesson on the
Holocaust |
| "There were heroic Poles who had striven to help Jews, but there
were not many." |
George Steiner, review of Jan T. Gross, Neighbours,
Observer 8 April 2001. |
| "A mentally handicapped person costs the public 4 reichmarks and
a convicted criminal 3.50 reichmarks. Cautious estimates state that in Gemany
300,000 persons are being cared for in public mental institutions. How many
marriage loans at 1,000 reichmarks per couple could be annually financed from
funds allocated to institutions?" |
an arithmetic problem form a German maths text book,
1936. |
| "Stupid people shouldn't breed." |
Quote from ER, 22 November 1997. |
| "The recipes for social policy become bleak. Don't waste money
educating those of low cognitive ability. Don't provide state welfare; it
merely encourages low ability women to bear low ability babies." |
Hannah-Steinburg, from a review of The Bell Curve-
intelligence and class structure in American Life, Richard Hernsteing and
Charles Murray, TES, 27 January 1995. |
| "Academic defends underclass claim: threat to society from
immoral people of low intelligence" |
Headline in Guardian, 23 December 1996. |
| "I know perfectly well.... that there is no such thing as race..
but I as a politician need a conception which enables the order which has
hitherto existed on historic bases to be abolished and an entirely new and
antihistoric order enforced and given an intellectual basis.. and for this, the
conception of race serves me well." |
Adolf Hitler, quoted in GRayling, A., "The last word on racism,
Guardian, 4 March 2000. |
| "The effectiveness of the national leader consists in preventing
his people from dividing thier attention and keeping it fixed on a common
enemy." |
Adolf Hitler, quoted in Grayling, A. "The last word on
nationalism, Guardian, 26 February 2000. |
| "The SS allowed him (Shindler) to continue because it was in
no-one's interest to stop him." |
Emilie Shindler, Shindler's widow. |
| "When Galileo looked through that telescope, Auschwitz became
inevitable." |
Edward Bond, Guardian, 5 April 2000 |
| (In answer to the question, "When did the Holocaust start?):
"The day that the Jews started to be treated differently." |
Martin Gilbert, seminar on the work of the Historian, Institute
of Education, University of London. |
| "Browning takes the most important explanations which have been
put forward in the past to account for such behaviour (atrocities against the
Jews in German occupied Europe)- wartime brutalisation, racism, routinisation,
special selection, careerism, obedience to orders, deference to authority,
indoctrination and conformity- and discusses which of these matches the
evidence in this particular case. His conclusion is that, while more tham one-
for example routinisation- is relevant, the vital factor was conformity to to
the group. Those who refused to shoot acted as individuals, but for the 80-90%
of the men, 'to break ranks and step out, to adopt ovetly non-conformist
behaviour, was simply beyond them. It was easier for them to shoot." |
Alan Bullock, "The evil dream", review of The path to Genocide,
Christopher Browning, Times Literary Supplement, 5 February
1993. |
| "To be honest, with this sort of kit (electonic equipment used
for torture), I tend not to ask too many questions about what they're doing
with it... As far as I'm concerned, they're grown men, they know what they're
doing." |
Electonic Equipment salesman, Dispatches, C4, 12 January
1995 |
| "Most societies in the Thirties were tough on asylum inmates,
thousands were sterilised commpulsorily in the United States. Men and women
were institutionalised for behaviour deemed 'deviant' by the powers that be.
But none of these other systems contemplated the mass extermination of their
disabled and asocial members. Death is what made the Third Reich
different." |
Richard Overy, "Would we pass by on the other side",
Observer, 15 January 1995. |
"I remember a radio programme in which Nazi concentration camp
survivors recalled liberation... Among the aid parcels which arrived at one
camp was a consignment of lipstick. Red Cross workers were baffled such
frivolous items had been sent, but were amazed by the response. The day after,
emaciated women could be seen all around the camp, infested with lice and
clothed in rags, but proudly adorned with scarlet lips. This small item had
made them human again.
This came to my mind at the checkout in Tesco. A
young woman asylum seeker was being told she could not buy mascara with her
vouchers. I was told a government list barred such 'luxury' items. Other
shoppers stared at the young woman with ill-concealed hostility. She may as
well have been wearing a yellow atar on her jacket. Perhaps one way this
government can meaningfully commemorate the Holocaust is to scrap the degrading
voucher system and restore some dignity to those who have suffered
discrimination." |
Jenny Sutton, Letters Page, Guardian, 27 January
2001. |
