Simon Wiesenthal Quotes

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

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

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 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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Justice for crimes against humanity must have no limitations.

There is no freedom without justice.

Tolerance and human rights require each other.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.

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