Quotessence
Home / Books / The Forgotten

The Forgotten

Book by Elie Wiesel · 9 quotes · Jewish, Memory, Israel

Filter quotes by topic

AllJewishMemoryIsraelAffectionDiasporaPrayerSilenceTruthForgetfulnessForgettingGodInjusticeJewish IdentityJewish TraditionPainPalestinePalestiniansSinSocial JusticeSuffering

The Forgotten Quotes

“And you don't give a damn for Israel's welfare—admit it! You don't give a damn about their security—go on, admit it! All that matters to you is your scoop, and the boss's congratulations, and if that piece brought you a Pulitzer Prize you jump for joy, and if Israel had to suffer for it, what the hell! Do I overstate the case?” “Yes, you overstate the case, damn right you overstate it! I love my work. I love it passionately, And not because of the rewards but because it's my weapon! I like to think that because of me men and women will be a little happier and their lives a little easier.” “You worry about everybody in the world except your own brothers and sisters in Israel!” “That's a lie!” “Then prove it!” “How do you want me to prove it? By concealing what happens there? By accepting Injustice there and passing over it in silence?” “And the injustices perpetrated against Israel? You don't care about them? The terrorist raids? The assassination of children? The murder of innocent civilians? “The paper we work for talks about them all the time, and often on the front page. Don't you think the Palestinians’ fate deserves a little attention too?” “Ah, there it is—finally admitting it's the Palestinians you care about.” “No. It's the truth I care about. And I love Israel as much as you do.” “But you're prepared to do them harm and put them at risk.” “No! I'm prepared to keep them from doing harm to themselves!” “Oh, magnificent, Tamar! You're going to help Israel in spite of itself! Bravo!”

TruthSilenceInjusticeIsraelPalestineJewishDouble StandardsPalestinians
Book:The Forgotten
Create image

“I admired my father not only for his kindness and intelligence, but also for his memory. He could quote long passages of the Talmud and Plato, the Zohar and the Upanishads. He could recall in rich detail his visit to the ghetto in Stanislav, his first skirmish as a partisan, his arrival in Palestine. He envied the character of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, who remembered what he had done in his mother's womb and even in his father's desire. Immersed in his own past and the world’s, my father was nevertheless a man of his times, reacting to all its convulsions. Politics stimulated him, and so did the international situation. Famine in Africa, racial persecution in Indonesia, religious conflict in Ireland and India: What men did to other men they did to him. When someone said that as a Jew he was wrong to care about anything but Israel, he answered angrily, “God did not create other people so we could turn our backs on them.” And yet he loved Israel with all his heart and soul. Why didn't he go back there to end his days? He did not know, and admitted that to me. “Maybe it's cowardice on my part. Maybe in Jerusalem every stone and every cloud would remind me of your mother; I'd be too unhappy.” Another time he told me, “I know it's convenient to love Israel from a distance. It's even a contradiction, but I'm not afraid of contradictions. In creating man in his own image, didn't God contradict Himself? Except that God is alone and free while man, still alone, is never free.”

GodSocial JusticeMemoryIsraelManContradictionJewishDiaspora
Book:The Forgotten
Create image

“God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, forget not their son who calls upon them now. You well know, You, source of all memory, that to forget is to abandon, to forget is to repudiate. Do not abandon me, God of my fathers, for I've never repudiated You. God of Israel, do not cast out a son of Israel who yearns with all his heart and all his soul to be linked to the history of Israel. God and King of the universe, exile me not from that universe. As a child I learned to revere You, to love You, to obey You; keep me from forgetting the child that I was. As an adolescent I chanted the litanies of the martyrs of Mainz and York; erase them not from my memory, You who erase nothing from Your own. As a man I learned to respect the will of our dead; Keep me from forgetting what I learned. God of my ancestors, let the bond between them and me remain whole, unbroken. You who have chosen to dwell in Jerusalem, let me not forget Jerusalem. You who wander with your people in exile, let me remember them. God of Auschwitz, know that I must remember Auschwitz. And that I must remind you of it. God of Treblinka, let the sound of that name make me, and You, tremble now and always. God of Belzec, let me, and You, weep for the victims of Belzec. You who share are suffering, You who share our weight, let me never be far from those who have invited You into their hearts. You who foresee the future of man, let me not cut myself off from my past. God of justice, be just to me. God of charity, be kind to me. God of mercy, plunge me not into the kaf-ha-kallah, the chasm where all life, hope and light are extinguished by oblivion. God of truth, Remember that without memory truth becomes only the mask of truth. Remember that only memory leads man back to the source of his longing for You. Remember, God of history, that You created man to remember. You put me into the world, You spared me in time of danger and death, That I might testify. What sort of witness would I be without my memory? Know, God, that I do not wish to forget you. I do not wish to forget anything. Not the living and not the dead. Not the voices and not the silences. I do not wish to forget the moments of abundance that enriched my life, nor the hours of anguish that drove me to despair. Even if you forget me, O Lord, I refuse to forget You.”

GodPrayerMemoryHolocaustMemorialForgettingJewish
Book:The Forgotten
Create image

“Malkiel often considered telling his father about her. But Elhanan would have taken it badly. He would have cried “What? You, a Jew, with a Muslim woman? I'm sure she hates Israel….” And indeed she did. Leila, a future follower of the PLO, was already anti-Israel. Between her and Malkiel, argument followed endless and sometimes violent argument. Yes, yes, Israel has suffered, she would say; but does that give them the right to make Palestinians suffer? Malkiel: You know very well it isn't Israel making them suffer! You can blame the Arab governments for their tragedy; why did they exhort them to flee their homes in 1948? And then let them live in refugee camps? Leila: You Jews did all you could to uproot those people and drive them from their land, and now you blame the Arabs? If you hadn't come along, there would have been no tragedy! He: We didn't come along, We came back. Easy enough for you to forget! She: I'm not forgetting anything, but you forget that the Palestinians have been living on that land for centuries, and you abandoned it two thousand years ago! Malkia lost his temper: Abandoned? You dare say we abandoned the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? And shown to Moses? And conquered by Joshua? Aren't you ashamed to falsify history? They expelled us from that land, but we never repudiated it, or forgot it, or abandoned it! Since King David there have always been Jews in Jerusalem, and Galilee, and Gaza. She: Oh yes? And the big cities? He: The big cities? Do you mean Haifa, Netanya and Tel Aviv? Do you want to tell me who built them? You, maybe? You were a smattering of people in the desert—do you dare deny that? She: That's the Afrikaner argument in South Africa. He: I forbid you to compare us to those racists and their apartheid! Racism and Judaism are incompatible! We suffered too much from racism to use it against others. She: There you go again with your suffering! As if you were the only people who ever knew hardship!”

SufferingRacismIsraelHardshipPalestineJewishJewsPalestiniansPalestine Israeli ConflictPalestinian Israeli Conflict
Book:The Forgotten
Create image

“Don't fight it, Tamar. Don't say no just for revenge; no more revenge. No more games. Let's take whatever comes along—the good and the less good alike—simply and in harmony. Despite pain and sorrow, we'll put our trust in what exalts us—my father’s relentless sufferings—and in what thwarts us, too—the ambiguities of life, most of all Jewish life in the diaspora. Will forge new links from which new sparks will rise. Spoken words will become signs, words unspoken will serve as warnings. And we'll invent the rest.”

PainSufferingSorrowJewishDiasporaVows
Book:The Forgotten
Create image

“You can't be serious. Your temple was destroyed two thousand years ago and you're grieving today?” Yes, as if it had happened only yesterday. “A lot of people have told me the Jews were crazy,” she said. “They were right.” Yes, we're crazy. “It's human nature to forget what hurts you, isn't it? Wasn't forgetfulness a gift of the gods to the ancient world? Without it, life would be intolerable, wouldn't it?” Yes, but the Jews live by other rules. For a Jew, nothing is more important than memory. He is bound to his origins by memory. It is memory that connects him to Abraham, Moses and Rabbi Akiba. If he denies memory he will have denied his own honor. “So you insist on keeping all your wounds open?” Those wounds exist; it is therefore forbidden and unhealthy to pretend that they don't.”

MemoryTraumaWoundsForgetfulnessJewishJewish TraditionJewish IdentityJewish Humor
Book:The Forgotten
Create image