Holocaust Quotes

See also Core English Vocabulary (H) Quotes

Well I was in Russia. I wasn`t allowed to be religious. My whole family was in the holocaust. My grandparents passed and not many survived. After the holocaust in Russia you were not allowed to be religious. So my parents raised me to know I was Jewish. You know who you are inside. You don`t need to tell the whole world. You believe what you believe and that`s what`s important. And that`s how I was raised. My family was like `you are Jewish in your blood`. We can celebrate Yom Kippur and Hannukah but not by the book. We do it to our own extent. Because being in Russia...Bar Mitzvahs weren`t held. When I was in school you would still see anti-Semitic signs. One of my friends who grew up in Russia, she was in second grade. And she came home one day crying. Her mother asked why she was crying and she said on the back of her seat there was a swastika. Now this is a country that obviously does not want you. So my parents raised me Jewish as much as they could and came to America. I love my religion. I think it`s a beautiful religion but I took parts of it that I want for myself. I don`t need to go to temple. I will, but I don`t need to.

- Mila Kunis

There were stories in the house of what had happened to them (her grandparents during the Holocaust), and it wasn`t that much talked about. I had to go on a website to read my grandfather`s descriptions of what happened to the family.

- Natalie Portman

Summing up his Holocaust experiences: "The whole experience was a complete nightmare, the way they treated us, what we had to do to survive. We were less than animals. Sometimes I dream about those days. I wake up in a sweat terrified for fear I`m about to be sent away to a concentration camp. But I don`t hold a grudge because that`s a great waste of time. Yes, there`s something dark in the human soul. For the most part human beings are not very nice. That`s why when you find those who are, you cherish them."

- Robert Clary

"It made me have a much greater understanding of loss, of loneliness, and the level of intense tragedy that so many people have experienced in this world, I take a lot less for granted. It`s really valuable to gain that, especially at a young age." - Referring to his portrayal of Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman who survived the Holocaust.

- Adrien Brody

(On giving up material possessions and shedding 30 pounds for The Pianist (2002)) "There`s no comparison to what Wladyslaw Szpilman went through and the suffering that people during the Holocaust, or nations afflicted with famine are going through, but it gave me a much greater understanding of that. And you can`t act that. I take the work very seriously."

- Adrien Brody

I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, `The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.` I know it`s not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it`s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.

- Sacha Baron Cohen

There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.

- Martin Scorsese

I get like 400 Holocaust scripts. That`s what you get for being the openly Jewish actress!

- Natalie Portman

I have a ton of Holocaust stuff, and some of it is really hard core.

- Sarah Silverman

The whole Indian thing, I always say it`s really the American holocaust. It`s something we need to look at.

- Skeet Ulrich

We cannot calculate the numbers of people who left, fled or were fished out of Europe just ahead of the Holocaust.

- Gene Tierney

(about the holocaust) It`s like a big, hulking monster squatting in the middle of our history and it won`t go away.

- Ben Kingsley

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation`s history. I mean in this century`s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn`t live in this century.

- Dan Quayle

We do a lot of shows for young people who have probably never been to the theater before and they are learning about the Holocaust, which unhappily, many of them do not know about.

- Linda Lavin

Nuclear holocaust might eliminate the Internet.

- Taylor Hanson

You can talk about Holocaust denial, but it`s really marginal for the most part. What is compelling about the Armenian genocide, is how it has been forgotten.

- Atom Egoyan

(Irving, who once called the Auschwitz death camp a) Disneyland for tourists, ... an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist.

- Charles Gray

...there is one thing that can never be said in Korea. You could never say that the Japanese occupation of Korea had been beneficial. That would create even more hostility than a movie praising North Korea. It would be like telling Jews that the Holocaust didn`t exist.

- Chan-wook Park

You can certainly go back to any number of stories - early coverage of Vietnam, the Holocaust - to show the press failing to tell the story.

- Daniel Okrent

God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.

- Simon Wiesenthal

The holocaust against the unborn is the greatest sin they could ever do or even ever participate in.

- Norma McCorvey

Father God, we just ask You to open Your wide, wide arms and look down upon us, Lord, and lead us, and let us know what we should do to stop this, this terrible, terrible holocaust.

- Norma McCorvey

Following the Second World War, we are a country of one ethnicity. After the moving of the borders, after the tragedy of the Holocaust and the murder of Polish Jews, we don`t have large minority groups.

- Aileen Earnest

I`ve never had a bank account in Switzerland since 1984. Why would the Swiss do this to me? Maybe the Swiss are trying to divert attention from the Holocaust gold scandal.

- Al Melanson

As freedom-loving people across the globe hope for an end to tyranny, we will never forget the enormous suffering of the Holocaust.

- Al Wallace

Yet, nearly 6 decades after the Holocaust concluded, Anti-Semitism still exists as the scourge of the world.

- Alberto Melloni

Jewish immigration in the 20th century was fueled by the Holocaust, which destroyed most of the European Jewish community. The migration made the United States the home of the largest Jewish population in the world.

- Allan Meltzer

I just finished doing a large Holocaust piece, a seated figure over seven feet tall. It`s gigantic. It`s going to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

- Allison Stewart

It took me fifty years to deal with the Holocaust at all. And I did it in a literary way.

- Allison Stewart

The United Nations was founded in the aftermath of World War II, just as the world was beginning to learn the full horrors of history`s worst genocide, the Holocaust that consumed 6 million Jews and 3 million others in Europe.

- Almeda Jacks

It is deeply shocking and incomprehensible to me that despite volumes of documentation and living witnesses who can attest to the horrors of the Holocaust, there are still those who would deny it.

- Amanda Anderson

The President of Iran has called for the destruction of Israel and the West and has even denied the holocaust took place. Iran and its terrorist arm Hezbollah are responsible for the current conflicts between Israel and Lebanon.

- Amanda Weber

The Iranian regime gives financial support to terrorist organizations all over the world, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the wiping the state of Israel from the map, while developing long-range missiles and trying to obtain nuclear weapon.

- Ambrose Redmoon

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

- Andrea Bagley

He asked if I would establish a workshop to help these Holocaust survivors get their dignity back, get off welfare.

- Angela Kubasa

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation`s history. I mean in this century`s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn`t live in this century.

- Dan Quayle