Joel C. Rosenberg Quotes

I know I am not only the bad conscience of the Nazis. I am also the bad conscience of the Jews. Because what I have taken up as my duty was everybody's duty.

Today, not a numerous, but an active part of the German people are beginning to realize, not that they have been led astray, not that bad times await them, not that the war may end in defeat, but that what is happening is sin and that they are personally responsible for each terrible deed that has been committed - naturally, not in the earthly sense, but as Christians.

It is almost certain that we will fail. But how will future history judge the German people, if not even a handful of men had the courage to put an end to that criminal?

The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior

To remain neutral in a situation where the laws of the land virtually criticized God for having created men of color was the sort of thing I could not, as a Christian, tolerate.

What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear... in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man.

There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.

It is the indispensable duty of those, who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who profess the obligations of Christianity, to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race, from whatever burden of oppression they may labour under.

doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right

The wrong is wrong and the fall of the majority in such wrong does not justify it. It is known that the right way is difficult and not all the people can follow it, but only the few distinguished for their principles.

I believe that to have interfered as I have done—in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

For the first time in the history of relations between people, a precedent has been created by which a great State [Germany], as a result of moral pressure alone, takes it upon itself to pay compensation to the victims [the Jews] of the government that preceded it [Nazi Germany].

Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews in this land have been murdered in the most bestial manner. The German people are again sleeping on in obtuse, stupid sleep giving these fascist criminals the temerity and opportunity to continue to rage—and they are doing it…. Everyone is guilty, guilty, guilty!

I can say that we are very clear in our mind about the responsibility of the national soldiers for the break with civilisation that was the Shoah. We are firmly convinced that this is something that will have to be handed over to generations to come... so we don't see any reason to change our view of history.

People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

I am one who shows great respect and commends the Cuban people for having the guts to go over to Cuba to get Cubans out when they had the opportunity to do it. I think it's a... shame that the Jews here in the United States in the 1930s didn't do the same for other Jews who were also in trouble.

Every generation will be challenged morally once in their life about its government, and they will have to say where they stand.

A time comes when silence is betrayal.

. . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

For the Christian man to reason that God does not want him involved in politics because there are too many evil men in government is as insensitive as for a Christian doctor to turn his back on an epidemic because there are too many germs there.

The Germans take quite a knock for the holocaust, but the Catholic church manages to push more people into death, disease, and degradation every year than the holocaust managed in its entire show. And it's thought rather crass to even mention the fact. It seems to me that as long as these Catholic bishops can show their face in public that we are in complicity with mass murder.

The sincere Christian knows that what died in Auschwitz was not the Jewish people but Christianity.

If we're being told to do stupid or cruel things, then it is morally correct to disobey.