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Gas Chambers Quotes

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Gas Chambers Quotes

“I became aware of Jews in my early teens, as I started to pick up the signals from the Christian church. Not that I was Christian – I’d been an atheist since I was five. But my father, a Congregational minister, had some sympathy with the idea that the Jews had killed Christ. But any indoctrination was offset by my discovery of the concentration camps, of the Final Solution. Whilst the term 'Holocaust' had yet to enter the vocabulary I was overwhelmed by my realisation of what Germany had perpetrated on Jews. It became a major factor in my movement towards the political left. I’d already read 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, the Penguin paperback that would change my life. The story of the gas chambers completed the process of radicalisation and would, just three years later, lead me to join the Communist Party.”

FatherPoliticsAwarenessAtheistCommunismGermanyCommunistSympathyHolocaustChristian ChurchJewsCommunist PartyAntisemitismGas ChambersSteinbeckMinisterConcentration CampsJohn SteinbeckThe Grapes Of WrathFinal SolutionChrist KillersCongregational Minister
Author:Phillip Adams
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“The bodies were not lying here and there throughout the room, but piled in a mass to the ceiling. The reason for this was that the gas first inundated the lower layers of air and rose slowly towards the ceiling. This forced the victims to trample one another in a frantic effort to escape the gas. Yet a few feet higher up the gas reached them. What a struggle for life there must have been! Nevertheless it was merely a matter of two or three minutes' respite. If they had been able to think about what they were doing, they would have realized they were trampling their own children, their wives, their relatives. But they couldn't think. Their gestures were no more than the reflexes of the instinct of self-preservation. I noticed that the bodies of the women, the children, and the aged were at the bottom of the pile; at the top, the strongest. Their bodies, which were covered with scratches and bruises from the struggle against each other, were often interlaced. Blood oozed from their noses and mouths; their faces, bloated and blue, were so deformed as to be almost unrecognizable. Nevertheless some of the Sonderkommando often did recognize their kin.The encounter was not easy, and I dreaded it myself. I had no reason to be there, and yet I had come down to be among the dead. I felt it my duty to my people and to the entire world to be able to give an accurate account of what I had seen if ever, by some miraculous whim of fate, I should escape.”

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Book:Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
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“It took time for the church to come to terms with the ignominy of the cross. Church fathers forbade its depiction in art until the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine.... Now, though, the symbol is everywhere: artists beat gold into the shape of the Roman execution device, baseball players cross themselves before batting, and cancy confectioners even make chocolate crosses for the faithful to eat during Holy Week. Strange as it may seem, Christianity has become a religion of the cross--the gallows, the electric chair, the gas chamber, in modern terms.”

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Author:Philip Yancey
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“If you’re too stupid to understand that a philosophy that favors a federally structured republic, with numerous restraints on the scope and power of government to interfere with individual rights or the free market, is a lot different from an ethnic-nationalist, atheistic, and socialist program of genocide and international aggression, you should use this rule of thumb: If someone isn’t advocating the murder of millions of people in gas chambers and a global Reich for the White Man you shouldn’t assume he’s a Nazi and you should know it’s pretty damn evil to call him one.”

PeopleIfsKnowsMenShouldDifferentPhilosophyUseGovernmentEvilIndividualWhiteMillionsRightsStupidProgramMurderAssumingInternationalFavorsDamnGasRepublicGenocideAggressionSocialistInterfereNaziRestraintWhite ManFree MarketScopeChamberThumbsAtheisticAdvocatingIndividual RightsGas Chambers
Author:Jonah Goldberg
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“I have said, and I repeat, at the risk of appearing sacrilegious, that the gas chambers are a detail of the history of the Second World War... If you take a book of a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what's called a detail.”

PeopleIfsWorldSaidTwoBookWarLinesMillionsRiskThousandTenPagesDiedDetailsWar Of The WorldsRepeatsGasConcentrationCampsWorld War IChamberAppearingSecond World WarConcentration CampGas ChambersSacrilegious
Author:Jean-Marie Le Pen
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“One woman approached me as she walked past and, pointing to her four children who were manfully helping the smallest ones over the rough ground, whispered: 'How can you bring yourself to kill such beautiful, darling children? Have you no heart at all?' One old man, as he passed me, hissed: 'Germany will pay a heavy penance for this mass murder of the Jews.' His eyes glowed with hatred as he said this. Nevertheless he walked calmly into the gas-chamber.”

MenHeartChildrenSaidHelpingEyePastBeautifulPayFourMassHatredMurderOur ChildrenJewHeavyGermanyHis EyesGasRoughOld ManSmallestNeverthelessPointingChamberDarlingOne WomanPenanceGas Chambers
Author:Rudolf Hoss
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“During the ages of faith the Church argued, not illogically, that any degree of cruelty towards sinners and heretics was justified, if there was a chance that it could save them, or others, from the eternal torments of hell. Thus, in the name of the religion of love, hundreds of thousands of people were not merely killed but atrociously tortured in ways that made the gas chambers of Beslen seem humane.”

PeopleIfsWayMadeSeemsAgeNamesChurchChanceHellAtheismDegreesEternalPositive AtheismCrueltyGasSinnerTormentJustifiedChamberHumaneHereticGas Chambers
Author:Margaret E. Knight
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“Why is it that nobody cries out, nobody spits in their faces, nobody jumps at their throats? We doff our caps to the S.S. men returning from the little wood; if our name is called out we obediently go with them to die, and we do nothing. We starve, we are drenched by rain, we are torn from our families. What is this mystery? This strange power of one man over another? This insane passivity that cannot be overcome? Our only strength is our great number; the gas chambers cannot accommodate all of us.”

IfsMenLittlesFacesDiesNamesNumbersMysteryCryStrangeRainOvercomingWoodsInsaneOur FamilyGasOne ManThroatTornChamberCapsSpitAccommodatePassivityPower Of OneGas Chambers
Author:Tadeusz Borowski
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“I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”

ScientistPreparedPhilosopherConvincedGasHallsMinistryDesksChamberLecturesBerlinAuschwitzGas ChambersTreblinka
Book:The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy
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“The whole thing was set up very cleverly. The people who were torn from their normal lives and put on the trains may have heard that terrible things were happening in Auschwitz, but even up to the end, they kept on thinking: Perhaps it isn't so bad after all. And then they arrived and the SS told them: "The old people and the sick can take the truck. Anyone who is still young can walk." It took us a while to realize that the ones who were being driven were really being taken to the gas chambers.”

PeopleThinkingMayStillsEndsWholeYoungRealizingWalksTakenHeardTerribleNormalHappeningsSickTrainDrivenGasTornOld PeopleTruckChamberTerrible ThingsNormal LifeAuschwitzVery CleverGas Chambers
Author:Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
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“The idea of watching an entire film basically from one person's perspective - and not even really from their perspective, but [it's] probably the most intimately shot film that's in any of these categories. If you're not familiar with Son of Saul, basically it's a film about a Jewish guy who's in concentration camp, but he helps dispose of the bodies after they leave the gas chamber. So, you watch the entire movie looking at Saul's face and looking at his interactions with people.”

PeopleIfsPersonsIdeasHelpingBodyFilmFacesGuyWatchesSonPerspectiveShotsFamiliarGasConcentrationCategoriesCampsInteractionChamberConcentration CampGas Chambers
Author:Bun B
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“The darkest days in my life after the war, after the war, was when I discovered that the ... most of the members and commanders of the Einsatz group that were doing the killings, not even in gas chambers, but killing with machine guns, had college degrees from German universities and PhD's and MD's. Couldn't believe it.”

BelieveWarGroupsCollegeMembersDegreesGunMachinesKillingUniversityGasChamberCommandersCollege DegreeMachine GunsPhdsGas Chambers
Author:Elie Wiesel
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“Granted, we may try to help our own family members because they share our DNA. Or help someone else in expectation that they will help us later. But when you look at what we admire as the most generous manifestations of altruism, they are not based on kin selection or reciprocity. An extreme example might be Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers. That's the opposite of saving his genes.”

TryingLooksMayHelpingMightShareExampleThousandMembersExpectationsOppositesJewExtremesAdmireSavingGrantedManifestationGenerousGasGenesAltruismDnaSelectionChamberFamily MembersReciprocityGas ChambersSchindler
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.”

MeanDiesCommunityLevelsConsciousnessStepsHigherDefeatExpectedTrialsRevolutionaryGasPatriotismRebellionChamberHigher LevelGas Chambers
Book:Revolutionary Suicide: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

KnowsMenPrayerLordGenerationsLipsGasRealisticChamberOur GenerationSearch For MeaningAuschwitzMans Search For MeaningGas Chambers
Book:Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition
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“My stories are of gas chambers, shootings, electrified fences, torture, scorching sun, mental abuse, and constant threat of death. But they are also stories of faith, hope, triumph, and love. They are stories of perseverance, loyalty, courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and of never giving up!”

GivingStoriesFacesSunGiving UpAnd LoveAbuseConstantThreatPerseveranceLoyaltyTriumphShootingTortureGasOverwhelmingOddsFenceNever Giving UpChamberFaith HopeScorchingGas ChambersOverwhelming Odds
Book:I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing Up in the Holocaust
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“The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews constitute one and the same historical lie, which made possible a gigantic financial-political fraud, the principal beneficiaries of which are the State of Israel and international Zionism, and whose principal victims are the German people - but not their leaders - and the entire Palestinian people.”

PeopleMadeStatesPoliticalLyingLeaderVictimHistoricalFinancialInternationalJewIsraelGasFraudGenocidePalestinianPrincipalChamberZionismBeneficiariesGas Chambers
Author:Robert Faurisson
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“Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.”

PeopleIfsMenGivingHumansStatesMomentsHandsAmericaGivenUnitedUnited StatesTakenGreaterRightsSubjectsArmsBearsGunDignityConstitutionSlaveryDemocraticSlaveCome UpGasConcentrationCampsAmendmentsPigsChamberFascistsSecond AmendmentHuman DignityRight To Bear ArmsConcentration CampUnarmedGas ChambersDemocratic Rights
Author:Huey Newton
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“Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck.”

KindIdeasHandsFictionGoneCrimeMurderStupidityTechniqueHonestlyImpressionInnocentGasLos AngelesDucksCaptainsGiftedBeatenChamberCrime FictionFiction WritersRubberPulpBystandersGas Chambers
Author:Leslie Ford
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“Did you ever notice how many survivors they have? Did you ever notice that? Everybody - every time you turn around, 15,000 survivors meet here, 400 survivors convention there. I mean, did you ever notice? Nazis sure were inefficient, weren't they? Boy, boy, boy! ...You almost have no survivors that ever say they saw a gas chamber or saw the workings of a gas chamber...they'll say these preposterous stories that anybody can check out to be a lie, an absolute lie.”

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Author:David Duke
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