Holocaust Remembrance Day 2015: 20 Sayings To Honor The Victims And Survivors Of Auschwitz 70 Years Later

Today, January 27 marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the world joins together to remember and honor the victims of the Holocaust. The day serves to commemorate the tragic loss of life, the genocide which occurred during the World War II era resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jews, 1 million Gypsies, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime. The day was designated an international memorial day by the United Nations General Assembly on November 1 in 2005 during the 42^nd planery session, the date was specifically chosen due to the January 27, 1945 liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The concentration camp was the largest of the Nazi’s infamous extermination camps; it was built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. In the subsequent years, survivors refused to forget the horrors they suffered, with authors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel writing memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz. To honor and commemorate the survivors, remember the atrocities and look forward to the future, we have collected 20 sayings and quotes that remember the Holocaust, and specifically Auschwitz 70 years later.

“The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction.”—Tim Holden

“If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?”—Jodi Picoult, “The Storyteller”

“Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.”—Billy Graham

“Eighteen months before I was born, my mother was in Auschwitz. She weighed 49 pounds. She always told me that God saved her so she could give me life. I was born out of nothing.”—Diane Von Furstenberg

“I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me.”—Diet Eman, “Things We Couldn’t Say”

“That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.”—Elie Wiesel

“The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.”—Dan Quayle

“The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.”—Stephen Ambrose

“God must have been on leave during the Holocaust.”—Simon Wiesenthal

“Sometimes I am asked if I know 'the response to Auschwitz; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don't even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response.”—Elie Wiesel

“The unutterable violence of the Holocaust shook our confidence in the possibility of telling any story of faith at all.”—Timothy Radcliffe

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”—Viktor E. Frankl

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”—Primo Levi

“If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.”—Anne Frank

“Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”—Yehuda Bauer

“Escape was not our goal since it was so unrealistic. What we wanted was to survive, to live long enough to tell the world what had happened in Buchenwald.”—Jack Werber, “Saving Children: Diary Of A Buchenwald Survivor And Rescuer

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”—Elie Wiesel

“When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.”—Anne Michaels

“The sad and horrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being murdered... This is the Jewish lesson of the Holocaust and this is the lesson which Auschwitz taught us.”—Ariel Sharon

“Surely there is no more wretched sight that the human body unloved and uncared for.”—Corrie Ten Boom, “The Hiding Place”