Ellie Midwood > Quotes

“Six month of sitting home, six month of doing absolutely nothing but watching TV, going out, sleeping, getting drunk and sleeping again. Oh no, wait, I was busy with something, I was doing some renovations in my new apartment. Which legally became mine only a month ago. Yep, that's what all my life has been about, spontaneous decisions and living in the moment. Because right now technically I'm a 25-year-old illegal immigrant from Russia, four years in New York, no papers, no work authorization, no work itself. Only a crazy life filled with restaurants, shops, beauty salons, clubs and restaurants again. How is it all possible? Very simple. I used to be a stripper.”
― Ellie Midwood, The New York Doll

“Humans were the biggest hypocrites among all species, for they banned abortions for Aryan women and yet they had no qualms about throwing Jewish children into gas chambers. They talked about helping fellow men and yet turned entire ships full of refugees away from their shores, condemning them to death. They spoke at length of their Christian values, but when it came to offering shelter to the persecuted, they shut their doors and chased the invaders off their property with guns and curses. “Because”
― Ellie Midwood, The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz

“he was a beautiful, almost breathtaking masterpiece of a man, in which some higher power forgot to put a soul.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Indigo Rebels

“Is it too much of a sin, my desire to be loved?”
― Ellie Midwood, The Indigo Rebels

“How much better the world would have been if everyone did the right thing.” “Hopefully, future generations will learn from our mistakes.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz

“Today they’re ordering you to marry, tomorrow they’ll hand you a machine gun and order you to start shooting people randomly, how about that?”
― Ellie Midwood, The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story

“As Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
― Ellie Midwood, The White Rose Network

“It was so easy to decide their fate, when they were nothing more than numbers on the sheets, presented to us for a signature by our adjutants. Now they were real people, with broken lives, torn families, and memories which would haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Austrian: A War Criminal's Story

“That’s not socialism; that’s called regular human decency, if that notion is new for you!”
― Ellie Midwood, The Violinist of Auschwitz

“Often we follow conventions that don’t suit us personally, and slowly lose ourselves in the rotten swamp of public opinion, dissolving, falling apart until nothing is left of us.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Indigo Rebels

“Hatred aged them just as fast as suffering aged their victims. Alma thought it to be a form of poetic justice.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Violinist of Auschwitz

“there are no Jews and Poles here, no French and no communists, there are only SS and inmates, and that’s what it all comes down to. We’re all equally nothing to them. Do you consider yourself superior to Violette because she’s a Jew and you’re a Pole?”
― Ellie Midwood, The Violinist of Auschwitz

“I'm giving it all because giving is what makes humans humans.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Violinist of Auschwitz

“I looked at him. He sat in the darkness, with his brows knitted tightly together, as though trying to grasp something, to understand the inconceivable, to pinpoint the moment when everything suddenly got out of control and the point of no return was officially passed by both sides – the future murderers and their victims. The new Reich sorted us into two kinds and now he suddenly found himself among those who held an ax above our miserable heads.”
― Ellie Midwood, No Woman's Land

“sun emerged from behind the clouds, delicately touching the tops of the trees as if ensuring that they were still in their place, where it had left them before going into hiding.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Indigo Rebels

“which was unusually quiet without Messerschmitts cutting through the butter of clouds”
― Ellie Midwood, The Indigo Rebels

“You both have the same goal, not to get caught in the past again, only you both chose entirely different paths to that goal.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Indigo Rebels

“Giselle wasn’t quite a people person.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Indigo Rebels

“Who would have thought that words could hold so much power, to stir so much hatred that it would eventually lead to genocide? I, for one, had always believed that we, the human race, were better than that.”
― Ellie Midwood, No Woman's Land

“Harboring hatred towards your offenders is the same thing as twisting the knife in your own stomach and hoping for them to die from the wound. It damages you more and more, not them. It drains you, and leaves you empty and hollow, like a used eggshell. Do you want to remain an empty eggshell for the rest of your life? You’re far too young to hold onto your anger, and your life will be miserable if you don’t let go of it.”
― Ellie Midwood, Emilia

“You asked me if I was religious before. I am. My religion is a world, in which people coexist in peace and where musicians are very useful people and where German pilots can like Jewish girls from the ghetto. Sounds absurd, I know. But so do all other religions and therefore, I’ll stick to mine if you don’t mind.” I didn’t.”
― Ellie Midwood, No Woman's Land

“For such is the very essence of every healer who was born to carry the difficult task of caring for the infirm: to throw themselves at death itself and fight it tooth and nail until the last drop of blood. In the end, they can close their eyes, at peace with the thought that they did everything they could and more, and would do it again a thousand times over, sacrificing themselves for the sake of others for as long as they lived.”
― Ellie Midwood, I Have to Save Them

“It’s always fear that makes one speak out against progress, the future, change.”
― Ellie Midwood, Metropolis

“And I’ll drop dead, but I’ll deliver Mengele his blasted Bach on Christmas.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Violinist of Auschwitz

“If more of us refused to be intimidated by them, this all wouldn’t have happened.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Girl Who Survived

“It’s idleness that kills you, not work. Work kept me alive all these years, and I don’t intend on lounging around when so many people could use my help. If it’s my age that you worry about, then don’t – I have all my wits.”
― Ellie Midwood, Emilia

“the Nazis only detested her handicapped kind. Now, they are outright killing them.”
― Ellie Midwood, When the World Went Silent

“from”
― Ellie Midwood, The Violinist of Auschwitz

“What was happening to her? She was becoming like her father right after he returned from the Great War, the righteous, honorable Monsieur Legrand who tried to teach her things that weren’t meant to be taught, as it appeared. One had to live through them to understand the true value of things, and Giselle hated all of the new revelations that came to her in this swamp of a street.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Lyon Affair

“In her opinion, there was no such thing as a bad dog.”
― Ellie Midwood, The Violinist of Auschwitz