Auschwitz Concentration Camp Quotes

“Brave people are not the ones who aren't afraid. Those are reckless people who ignore the risk; they put themselves and others in danger. That's not the sort of person I want on my team. I need the ones who know the risk-- whose legs shake, but carry on.”
― Antonio Iturbe, La bibliotecaria de Auschwitz

“Auschwitz?! That is a name I had heard before. There is not much time for thinking. It had been raining here not so long ago. The asphalt of the wet, wide platform reflects the light of the high lighting-poles. The row of armed SS men competes in howling with their dogs they hold on leashes”
― Azriel Feuerstein

“Those of us directed towards the right were lined up in threes with much shooting and beating. I was in the first row, at the platform’s edge. Suddenly, we see a group of older women and women with children nearing the road, under the platform. In the first row I see my mother supported on both sides by two friends. She too becomes aware of me. And out of the throat of this reticent, soft-spoken woman who I don’t remember ever raising her voice, breaks out a terrible, desperate, piercingly loud, howling shout: ‘GYURIKA!!!”
― Azriel Feuerstein

“SS-mannen spurte meg hvor jeg kom fra. Jeg fortalte at jeg kom fra Norge. Han ville vite hvorfor jeg var blitt arrestert og hadde havnet i Auschwitz. Jeg svarte at det var fordi jeg var jøde. Kun derfor. Men han ville ikke tro meg.”
― Robert Savosnick, Jeg ville ikke dø

“Musel jsem se dívat na průzory do plynových komor a sám sledovat proces smrti... Znovu a znovu se mě ptali, jak se já a moji lidé na tyto operace můžeme nepřetržitě dívat a jak jsme schopni to vydržet. Má stálá odpověď zněla, že je to otázka železného odhodlání, s jakým musíme plnit Hitlerovy rozkazy, a takové odhodlání že lze získat pouze potlačením všech lidských citů.”
― William Styron, Sophie’s Choice

“Chiedi al Bunkerjakob
che controllava tutto
Come fai a resistere
Lui disse
Sia lode a quanto
rende duri
Io sto bene
mangio le razioni
di quelli là dentro
La loro morte non mi tocca
Tutto questo mi tocca
quanto può toccarmi
la pietra di questo muro”
― Peter Weiss, The Investigation

“The spark of humor has been extinguished in me
I, who so wanted to burst into laughter
How to go on living like this
Without humor, like beasts?”
― Avraham Cytryn, Youth Writing Behind the Walls: Avraham Cytryn's Lodz Notebooks

“One did not need to know why the ovens were so ugly, so very ugly. A tragically burly insect eight feet tall and made out of rust. Who would want to cook with an oven such as this? Pulleys, plungers, grates and vents were the organs of the machine… The patients, all dead, were delivered on a stretcher-like apparatus. The air thick and warped with the magnetic heat of creation. Thence to the Chamber, where the bodies were stacked carefully and, in my view, counter-intuitively, with babies and children at the base of the pile, then the women and the elderly, and then the men. It was my stubborn belief that it would be better the other way round, because the little ones surely risked injury under that press of naked weight. But it worked. Sometimes, my face rippling peculiarly, with smiles and frowns, I would monitor proceedings through the viewing slit. There was usually a long wait while the gas was invisibly introduced by the ventilation grilles. The dead look so dead. Dead bodies have their own language.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow