The Trumpets of Jericho Quotes

“At Auschwitz, everything was either ass-backward or a corruption of itself. The Ten Commandments were turned on their head-- thou shalt kill, thou shalt steal, thou shalt covet-- the Golden Rule nonexistent. Here, the weak were at the mercy of the strong-- the lame, sick, and feeble treated not with kindness but contempt. Here, nothing was less valuable than the life of a human being; a crust of bread, a pack of cigarettes, a needle and thread were worth more. Women with children and the elderly were the first to die, not the last. Here, people went to the hospital to be killed, not cured.”
― J. Michael Dolan, The Trumpets of Jericho

“Menachem leaned to his right and spat. "There's that name again," he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "Refresh my memory, will you, rabbi? Who the hell is this God you keep mentioning?"
Langfus responded as if to a legitimate question. "The one true God of our fathers. The God of Abraham and Moses."
"Oh.... Him," Menachem said. "Yes, I remember Him. He went away a while back, didn't He? For good it looks like, too. But He did leave a message, want to read it? It's written right here."
The boy pulled up his sleeve to reveal the five-digit tattoo.”
― J. Michael Dolan, The Trumpets of Jericho

“Death by malnutrition is one of the more agonizing there is. Essentially, it comes from the body feeding on itself, first its reserves of fat, then muscle and other tissue. In Q-Camp, Noah had begun to feel this very hunger, not that of a missed meal or even a few days of meals, but a silent and continuous scream from the body, a tortured cry every waking minute from every slowly dying cell, a demand that never ceased nor gave surcease from pain. It was the hunger that in its terrible, self-predatory alchemy transformed men into obscenities, into something not men.”
― J. Michael Dolan, The Trumpets of Jericho

“Not that Baum had taken offense. Still, he had to wonder how many of his people had perished that day, or for that matter since he and Cyrankiewicz had sat down to talk. A dull, orange glow pulsed above the tree line to the north; the last of the Scharfuhrer's fire pits were dying out for the evening. Granted, a little unintended bigotry or even the occasional racial slur was something to be expected, and certainly no cause for high dudgeon. But to what extent, one had to ask, had such seemingly innocuous behavior led to the slaughter of children and the emergence of creatures such as Otto Moll?”
― J. Michael Dolan, The Trumpets of Jericho

“Birkenau simmered in the July sun like some hideous brew, a witch's potion of blood, sweat, smoke, and excrement worthy of something the weird sisters might have cooked up in Macbeth.”
― J. Michael Dolan, The Trumpets of Jericho