Chaim A. Kaplan Quotes

I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.

The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea what liberation means.

In every war, there's looting.

Guerrilla parties are making dreadful slaughter upon the Union men in Missouri and stealing and destroying their property... The entire route across the State... bears the marks of the ravages of war... Anarchy reigns in Missouri.

The masses are principally to be feared because they fly out ever and anon into violence; and from plundering they proceed to the flat levelling of estates.

There's always a little jump to your heart when you realize you've got looting.

Jewish children learn in secret. In backrooms and on long benches near a table. In time of danger they lean to hide their book between their stomach and their trousers---a kind of smuggling.

There is no doubt that Hitlerian Nazism will ultimately be defeated, for in the end the civilized nations will rise up to defend the liberty which the German barbarians seek to steal from mankind. However, I doubt that we will live through this carnage.

You have seen for a long time the great disorder in the world caused by these crimes. It is so bad in some of your provinces, I am told, and you are so weak in the administration of justice, that one can hardly go along the road by day or night without being attacked by robbers; and whether at home or abroad one is in danger of being despoiled either by force or fraud.

The conquering army burnt villages, devastated the land, plundered people’s wealth, took Brahmins and children and women of all classes captive, flogged with thongs of raw hide, carried a moving prison with it, and converted the prisoners into obsequious slaves.

All the business houses, banks, stores, etc., in the city were robbed and burned save one, and... most of the businessmen killed.... Mrs. Reed put out the fire six times to save her house, and they would fire it anew, but she by almost superhuman exertions saved it.... One lady threw her arms around her husband, and begged of them to spare his life. They rested the pistol on her arm as it was around his body, and shot him dead, and the fire from the pistol burnt the sleeve of her dress….The very air seems charged with blood and death.... The fires were still glowing in the cellars... Here and there among the embers could be seen the bones of those who had perished.... The sickening odor of burned flesh was oppressive. Pandemonium itself seems to have broken loose... and death runs riot over the country….

I carried off his silver, gold, alabaster possessions, … and much bronze property, his palace women and his daughters, … his wagons, his oxen, his sheep, and his valuable tribute which like the stars of heaven, had no number.

Battle is an orgy of disorder.

We have to face it: in America today the way to have fun and celebrate is to break a store window and take something. That's the way it is, today in America, and we have to accept it.

My house is very clean apart from a very small part of it that looks as if we've been burgled, which is my office.

In human history, the desire for revenge and the desire for loot have often been closely associated.

If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism.

Set Europe ablaze!

Those who do not give assistance according to their ability when a village is being plundered, a dyke is being destroyed, or a highway robbery committed, shall be banished with their goods and chattels.

War is not neat. It's not tidy. It's a mess.

When they had despoiled all the country near to Damascus, they advanced to Jerusalem, took it by storm, and put all the Christians to the sword. The women and girls, having suffered every insult from a brutal disorderly soldiery, were loaded with chains. They destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; and when they found nothing among the living, to glut their rage, they opened the tombs of the Christians, took out the bodies, and burnt them.

They gathered together without any other counsel, and without any amour saving with staves and knives, and so went to the house of a knight dwelling thereby, and brake up his house and slew the knight and the lady and all his children great and small and brent his house. And they then went to another castle, and took the knight thereof and bound him fast to a stake, and then violated his wife and his daughter before his face and then slew the lady and his daughter and all his other children, and then slew the knight by great torment and burnt and beat down the castle. And so they did to divers other castles and good houses; and they multiplied so that they were a six thousand, and ever as they went forward they increased, for such like as they were fell ever to them, so that every gentleman fled from them and took their wives and children with them, and fled ten or twenty leagues off to be in surety, and left their house void and their goods therein. These mischievous people thus assembled without captain or amour robbed, brent and slew all gentlemen that they could lay hands on, and forced and ravished ladies and damsels, and did such shameful deeds that no human creature ought to think on any such

The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.

in the clash of contending armies and amid the groans of the wounded and the dying, the interests of education are sacrificed – the pacific virtues take their flight from the earth

The orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this thieving mob.