East West Notes

“I think Upton Sinclair once wrote that a man has difficulty understanding something if his salary depends on his not understanding.”
― Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

“There was an inner sense to the Nazi persecution and extermination of the Jews, for the progressive removal of the Jews meant the conquering of time - of the present in 1933 through their exclusion from German society; of a moral past in 1938 through the elimination of Judaism and the Bible; and ultimately of history, and therefore of the future, in 1941 through the extermination from the face of the earth of all the Jews as the source of all historical evil.”
― Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

“Claims for compensation for physical damage through sterilization and for psychological damage through incarceration were not recognized for this reason. Claims for lost possessions were rejected on the basis of a wholesale prejudice that Gypsies did not own possessions. Claims for compensation for lost income on the basis of a reduction of earning capacity (as a result of physical and psychological damage and years lost due to imprisonment) were rejected on the grounds that Gypsies were unlikely to have sought employment even under more favourable circumstances. Like the German Jews, the Roms had been stripped of their citizenship rights by the Nazi regime's racist legislation.”
― Yaron Matras, I Met Lucky People: The Story of the Romani Gypsies

“The parade, the participation of children, the public mockery, the photographs - all of these were essential elements of prewar anti-Jewish actions. The public humiliation of Jews in German localities followed a script from 1933 through the deportations in 1941-1943. Germans knew this script and followed it as they deported the Jews.”
― Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide