Elie Wiesel Quotes

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

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

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.

When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.

Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night in the train, and, now, the last night in Buna. How much longer were our lives to be dragged out from one 'last night' to another?

Peeta, how come I never know when you're having a nightmare?” I say. “I don't know. I don't think I cry out or thrash around or anything. I just come to, paralyzed with terror,” he says. “You should wake me,” I say, thinking about how I can interrupt his sleep two or three times on a bad night. About how long it can take to calm me down. “It's not necessary. My nightmares are usually about losing you,” he says. “I'm okay once I realize you're here.

I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, Why have I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family to be alive? I didn’t know.

No matter what I accomplish, it doesn't seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.

I survived, but it's not a happy ending.

It takes an extraordinary toll on me to re-live my experiences, the horrors of my past and the pain I had to endure. And yet, I believe remembering is the only way to promote healing, to promote awareness and accountability.

One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone else just wants you to get over it, but of course you don't get over it. You get stronger; you try and live on; you endure; you change; but you don't get over it. You carry it with you.

I remember people who'd had a lot of hardship during the war. They'd thought we'd won.

So they didn't let anybody else off. I can't live like this, I'm finished. Auschwitz was easy.

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

War taught me that not everything is glamorous.

I was interned in Auschwitz for one year. I didn't bring back anything, except for a few jokes, and that filled me with shame. Then again, I didn't know what to do with this fresh experience. For this experience was no literary awakening, no occasion for professional or artistic introspection.

I played in bombed-out houses and grew up with the ever-present consequences of a lost war and the awareness that my own country had inflicted terrible pain on many nations during the horrific World War II.

The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone.

It's been like a bad dream I never woke from.

So much of Judaism is about suffering, survival, and pathos.

And the general shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything.' If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.

At a certain point memory becomes a beach strewn with landmines, all life’s many losses buried in those sands.

Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard.' Sethe shook her head. 'Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part.

We had to survive to remember. Otherwise everything we were would disappear. Those people we loved would fade as though we'd never loved them, as if they'd never walked and talked and burned, forgetting them was the real evil. That was the hole of darkness.