Irena Pasvinter

“Being pro-Israel, how strange, does not necessarily mean lack of anti-Semitism. You can love Israel and still think that there are a bunch of Jews out there who control world markets and world finance.”
― Tuvia Tenenbom, The Lies They Tell

“The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary are her famous words, “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”…It is far more gratifying to believe that an innocent dead girl has offered us grace than to recognize the obvious: Frank wrote about people being “truly good at heart” before meeting people who weren’t. Three weeks after writing those words, she met people who weren’t.”
― Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

“The Phoenician system was a much easier consonantal system made up of only a few graphemes (letters). These “letters” did not stand for things, but for the sounds that made up words.”
― Robert R. Cargill, The Cities That Built the Bible

“In the Vilnius ghetto, the news of German setbacks in the Soviet Union in the opening weeks of 1943 resulted in an upsurge of grim humour, as Herman Kruk recorded in his diary: A German asks a Jew to lend him 20 roubles. The Jew immediately takes the sum out of his pocket and gives it to him. The German wonders: ‘How can this be? You don’t know me at all, and you trust me with such a sum?’ I have the fullest trust in the Germans,’ answers the Jew. ‘You took Stalingrad and gave it back; you took Kharkov and gave it back. I’m sure that you will give me back my 20 roubles.’ What is the difference between General Rommel and a watch? A watch goes tick-tock and goes forward; Rommel goes tock-tick and goes backward … What city is the largest in the world? Stalingrad, because it took the Germans months to get from the outskirts to the centre.6”
― Prit Buttar, Centuries Will Not Suffice: A History of the Lithuanian Holocaust