Year Zero Quotes

“after all that, after the concentration camps in Germany, after we stated definitely that our former home was changed into a mass grave, we can only grope and clasp with our finger tips the shadows of our dearest and painfully cry: I can never more see my home. The victorious nations that in the 20th century removed the black plague from Europe must understand once and for all the specific Jewish problem. No, we are not Polish when we are born in Poland; we are not Lithuanians even though we once passed through Lithuania; and we are neither Roumanians though we have seen the first time in our life the sunshine in Roumenia. We are Jews!!”
― Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945

“On May 7 crowds had gathered on Dam Square in the center of Amsterdam in front of the Royal Palace, cheering, dancing, singing, waving the orange flag of the Dutch royal family, in anticipation of the triumphant British and Canadian troops whose arrival was imminent. Watching the happy throng from the windows of a gentlemen’s club on the square, German naval officers decided in a last-minute fit of pique to fire into the crowd with a machine gun mounted on the roof. Twenty-two people died, and more than a hundred were badly injured. Even that was not the very last violent act of the war.”
― Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945

“LIBERATION IS PERHAPS not the right word to describe the end of the war in colonial societies. Most Asians were more than happy to be rid of the Japanese, whose “Asian liberation” had turned out to be worse than the Western imperialism it temporarily replaced. But liberation is not quite what the Dutch had in mind for the Dutch East Indies in 1945, or the French for Indochina, or the British for Malaya.”
― Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945

“Gerçekle yüz yüze gelmeyi, çoğu kez hayal kırıklığı izler. Beauvoir'nın anlattığına göre, Sartre ABD'den "bütün gördükleri biraz afallamış" olarak döndü. İnsanlardan elbette hoşlanmış ve Roosevelt'e hayran kalmıştı; ama Beauvoir'nın ifadesiyle "Batı yarıkürenin uygarlığında ekonomik sistem, ayrımcılık ve ırkçılık dışında onu şoka uğratan birçok şey vardı - Amerikalıların tutuculuğu, değerler ölçeği, efsaneleri, iyimserlikleri, her türlü trajik şeyden kaçınışları.”
― Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945

“Yahudi intikamı siyasal destek görmediği için, hiçbir zaman uygulanamadı. Siyonist liderler savaşla kana bulanmış Avrupa ülkelerinden uzakta, çöl arazisini işleyen ve gururlu yurttaş-askerler olarak düşmanlarıyla çarpışan yiğit İsrailoğulları teması üzerine kurulu farklı türden bir normallik yaratmaya çalıştılar. İçe kapanık bir yaklaşımla geleceğe baktılar. Gerçi o gelecek de katliamla, etnik ve dinsel çatışmayla dolu olacaktı ama dökülen Alman kanı olmayacaktı.”
― Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945