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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Throughout history, all dictators, tyrants, and oppressors, whatever their ideology—whether Aryan, African, Asian, Arab, Slav, or any other racial background; whether defenders of popular revolutions, or the privileges of the upper classes, or God’s mandate, or martial law—have had one thing in common: the vicious persecution of the written word. Books are extremely dangerous; they make people think.
Brave people are not the ones who aren’t afraid. Those are reckless people who ignore the risk; they put themselves and others in danger. That’s not the sort of person I want on my team. I need the ones who know the risk—whose legs shake, but who carry on.”
Auschwitz not only kills innocents; it kills innocence as well.
“The strongest athlete isn’t the one who finishes first. That athlete is the fastest. The strongest athlete is the one who gets up again every time he falls, the one who doesn’t stop when he feels a pain in his side, the one who doesn’t abandon the race, no matter how far away the finish line is. That runner is a winner whenever he reaches the finish line, even if he comes in last.
Sometimes, no matter how much you want it, being the fastest isn’t an option, because your legs aren’t as long or your lungs as large. But you can always choose to be the strongest. It’s up to you—your willpower and your effort.
H. G. Wells is right. There really is a time machine—books.
Josef Mengele graduated with a medical degree from the University of Munich and, from 1931, served in units close to the Nazi party. He was a disciple of Dr. Ernst Rüdin, one of the main supporters of the idea that worthless lives should be eradicated. Rüdin was also one of the architects of the law of obligatory sterilization promulgated by Hitler in 1933 for people with deformities, mental disabilities, depression, or alcoholism. Mengele had managed to arrange to have himself assigned to Auschwitz, where he had a human warehouse at his disposal for his genetic experiments.
people who get angry at vulgar expressions are fainthearted, and real life will sneak up on them.
“You don’t owe me anything, my dear. You don’t owe anyone anything. In here, we’ve all more than paid our debts.”
Poor ants, she thinks. They must already have a tough enough time finding crumbs in Auschwitz.
Another trip to mankind’s final frontier.
He knew better than anyone that Communism was a beautiful path that ended at a precipice.
some sense of what the Holocaust was that no history book could teach me;
Until now, I hadn’t believed in heroes, but I now know they exist: Dita is one of them.
