Quotes About Legacy

I don't want my past to become anyone else's future.

Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. That is his duty.

But because of his telling, many who did not believe have come to believe, and some who did not care have come to care. He tells the story, out of infinite pain, partly to honor the dead, but also to warn the living - to warn the living that it could happen again and that it must never happen again. Better than one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling, he has decided, if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all. (vi)

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.

Not to transmit an experience is to betray it.

Today's wealthy are poor though they don't know it. They can't bring their possessions to where we're all going.

You are the sum total of all that we have been," said the youngster who looked like my former self. "In a way we are the ones to execute John Dawson. Because you can't do it without us. Now, do you see?" I was beginning to understand. An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers.

To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.     SOMETIMES

Even if I wrote on nothing else, it would never be enough, even if all the survivors did nothing but write about their experiences, it would still not be enough. *Response when asked how much longer is he going to write about the Holocaust

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future

Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? I do not. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions. And yet, I sense their presence. I always do—and at this moment more than ever. The presence of my parents, that of my little sister. The presence of my teachers, my friends, my companions … This honor belongs

To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.

To live is to betray the dead. We hasten to bury and forget them because we are ashamed; we feel guilty towards them.

To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.

Jusqu'alors j'avais toujours cru que la mission du Juif consistait à être le tremblement de l'Histoire, plutôt que le vent qui la fait trembler.

He who doesn't forget God isn't cold in his grave," she said. "What keeps him warm?" I insisted. Her thin voice had become like a whisper: it was a secret. "God himself.

This was the first story I had ever heard in which the Jews were not the ones to be afraid. Until this moment I had believed that the mission of the Jews was to represent the trembling of history rather than the wind which made it tremble

You walk out in the evening with a woman, you tell her that she is beautiful and you love her, and twenty centuries hear what you are saying.

To write your memoirs is to draw up a balance sheet of your life so far.

If today I am only a question mark, he is responsible.

The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.

Here, take this knife," he said. "I won't need it anymore. You may find it useful. Also take this spoon. Don't sell it. Quickly! Go ahead, take what I'm giving you!" My inheritance …

Despite overwhelmingly favorable reviews, the book sold poorly. The subject was considered morbid and interested no one. If a rabbi happened to mention the book in his sermon, there were always people ready to complain that it was senseless to "burden our children with the tragedies of the Jewish past.

My father, an enlightened spirit, believed in man. My grandfather, a fervent Hasid, believed in God. The one taught me to speak, the other to sing. Both loved stories. And when I tell mine, I hear their voices. Whispering from beyond the silenced storm, they are what links the survivor to their memory.