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The darkest days in my life after the war, after the war, was when I discovered that the ... most of the members and commanders of the Einsatz group that were doing the killings, not even in gas chambers, but killing with machine guns, had college degrees from German universities and PhD's and MD's. Couldn't believe it.

Elie Wiesel

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Elie Wiesel
Age: 87 †
Born: 1928
Born: September 30
Died: 2016
Died: July 2
Autobiographer
Humanist
Journalist
Judaic Scholar
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Activist
Professor
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Sighetu Marmaţiei
Eliezer Wiesel
A-7713
Élie Wiesel
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Killings

More quotes by Elie Wiesel

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The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.
Elie Wiesel
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Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.
Elie Wiesel
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In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.
Elie Wiesel
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I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.
Elie Wiesel
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Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.
Elie Wiesel
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Humanity would never tolerate it
Elie Wiesel
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A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he's waiting for -- the Revolution.
Elie Wiesel
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In Talmudic literature, certainly in the beginning, he was like a human being - except he was a serpent. But he was talking and walking and probably dreaming.
Elie Wiesel
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In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, that person comes first. One's very suffering gives one priority. . . . To watch over one who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.
Elie Wiesel
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I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don't know how
Elie Wiesel
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Go over to Greece with the Iliad and Odyssey. These have elements of history, and they have non-historical elements. It's very difficult to pull them apart. And I think there's not much reason to.
Elie Wiesel
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Human beings should be held accountable. Leave God alone. He has enough problems.
Elie Wiesel
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I have tried to keep memory alive... I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
Elie Wiesel
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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
Elie Wiesel
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Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.
Elie Wiesel
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I thought that culture and education are the shield. An educated person cannot do certain things and, and be educated, you cannot, and there they were, killing children day after day.
Elie Wiesel
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No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has escaped the kingdom of night.
Elie Wiesel
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One thing is that [Tibetans] should not give up hope. That's - even [if] it lasts a century. My discussions with the Dalai Lama always were about that.
Elie Wiesel
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I belong to a tradition that believes that the death of a single child is a blemish on creation.
Elie Wiesel
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Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.
Elie Wiesel