Simon Wiesenthal Quotes

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

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.'

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Tolerance and human rights require each other.

God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.

Justice for crimes against humanity must have no limitations.

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.

There is no freedom without justice.

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.

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

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

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

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.

No gassing took place in any camp on Germany soil.

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

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.

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.

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

Human rights is the only ideology that deserves to survive

Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals.

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

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.