Quotes About Memory

Andavo già a scuola da qualche mese, quando accadde una cosa solenne ed eccitante che determinò tutta la mia successiva esistenza. Mio padre mi portò un libro.

No child, not even the most ordinary, forgets or forgives a single one of the commands inflicted on it.

Do?i ?e vreme kad ?e ljudi svoja ?ula prekovati u se?anje, a sve vreme u prošlost. Do?i ?e vreme kad ?e jedna jedina prošlost obuhvatiti sve ljude, kad ne?e biti ništa osim te prošlosti, kad ?e svako verovati: u prošlost.

Some stories are true that never happened.

The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again.

One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.

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

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.

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)

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

God is God because he remembers.

Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.

Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to life as long as God himself

The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria...

I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.

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.

It was the beginning of the war. I was twelve years old, my parents were alive, and God still dwelt in our town.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer—or my life, period—would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory.

Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

Men to the left! Women to the right! Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother.