The gates of the camp opened. It seemed as though an even darker night was waiting for us on the other side. The
Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.
Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and de...
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy...
NIGHT. No one was praying for the night to pass quickly. The stars were but sparks of the immense conflagration that was consuming us. Were this conflagration to be extinguished one day, nothing would...
My hands were aching, I was clenching them so hard. To strangle the doctor and the others! To set the whole world on fire! My father’s murderers! But even the cry stuck in my throat.
In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer—or my life, period—would not ha...
I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The...
For the good of all, I say: Be careful, the brutality of the world must not be more powerful or attractive than love and friendship.
Even if I wrote on nothing else, it would never be enough, even if all the survivors did nothing but write about their experiences, it would still not be enough.*Response when asked how much longer is...
Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.
Those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know. And even the survivors who have decided to bear witness confirm it in their way: They almost all say that their experience can't be related in...
We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the s...
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human di...
There is no discussing theology, sociology and politics when someone is under the spell of a self-enclosed totalitarian ideology. Intentionally or out of ignorance, Ahmed, who is empirical in all matt...
Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
It was the beginning of the war. I was twelve years old, my parents were alive, and God still dwelt in our town.
I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it…
Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.