Holocaust Representation Quotes

When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines.

There is no way a non-Jew could say what I did in 'The Holocaust Industry' without being labelled a Holocaust denier. I am labelled a Holocaust denier, too.

It is often said of me - some intend it as a compliment, others as a complaint - that I write about a single subject: the Holocaust. I have no quarrel with that. Why shouldn't I accept, with certain qualifications, the place assigned to me on the shelves of libraries?

I would say that 'Schindler's List,' as powerful as it was, seemed to have continued with a particular iconography of victimization and passivity. That was the iconography with which I had grown up and to which I had grown accustomed.

When we write about Auschwitz, we must know that Auschwitz, in a certain sense at least, suspended literature. One can only write a black novel about Auschwitz or - you should excuse the expression - a cheap serial, which begins in Auschwitz and is still not over.

The Holocaust movie is almost a genre in itself these days.

I think Maus I is better than Maus II. The standard here is whether or not it's as good as a great book of prose literature and by that standard, no, it's not that great.

When I read 'Maus,' I realized you could tell a story of tremendous import using the graphic novel.

Many people think making a film about history... about war... about the Holocaust, it might be heavy, dramatic and traumatic. I don't see things like that... you can find irony everywhere. It's how I look at life.

Holocaust films will be made and should be made as long as we can't understand what makes people so cruel to each other.