XOX

“We share Hitler's planet and several of his preoccupations; we have changed less than we think. We like our living space, we fantasize about destroying governments, we denigrate science, we dream of catastrophe. If we think we are victims of some planetary conspiracy, we edge towards Hitler. If we believe that the Holocaust was a result of the inherent characteristics of Jews, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, or anyone else, then we are moving in Hitler's world.”
― Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

“The dominant Roman Catholic Church in Poland took no stance against the mass murder of millions of Jews who had lived for centuries among its adherents. Catholic doctrine at the time deemed Jews collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus, and Catholic teachings about modernity connected the blight of communism to Judaism.”
― Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

“Understanding the Holocaust is our chance, perhaps our last one, to preserve humanity.”
― Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

“Wanting to help was not enough. To rescue a Jew in these conditions, where no structure supported the effort and where the penalty was death, required something stronger than character, something greater than a worldview. Generous people took humane decisions, yet still failed. Probably most men and women of goodwill who were able to take the initial risk failed after a month, a week, a day. It was an era where to be good meant not only the avoidance of evil but a total determination to act on behalf of a stranger, on a planet where hell, not heaven, was the reward for goodness.”
― Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning