Voices...

“I am afraid, but I still pursue my quest. The further I go, the less I understand. Perhaps there is nothing to understand.”¹

“Answers: I say there are none...Answers only intensify the question: ideas and words must finally come up against a wall higher than the sky, a wall of human bodies extending to infinity.”²

If He wanted me to be dust, why hasn’t He left me as dust? But I’m not dust. I’m standing up, I’m walking, thinking, wondering, shouting: I’m human!”³

“I want to know why human beings turn into beasts...I want to know how good family men can slaughter children and crush old people.”⁴

“Trapp asked the men not to talk about it, but they needed no encouragement in that direction. Those who had not been in the forest did not want to learn more. Those who had been there likewise had no desire to speak, either then or later...At Józefow a mere dozen men out of nearly 500 had responded instinctively to Major Trapp’s offer to step forward and excuse themselves from the impending mass murder. Why was the number of men who from the beginning declared themselves unwilling to shoot so small?...The battalion had orders to kill Jews, but each individual did not...To break ranks and step out, to adopt overtly nonconformist behavior, was simply beyond most of the men. It was easier to shoot...The reserve policemen faced choices, and most of them committed terrible deeds. But those who killed cannot be absolved by the notion that anyone in the same situation would have done as they did. For even among them, some refused to kill and other stopped killing. Human responsibility is ultimately an individual matter.”⁵

“I distrust miracles. They exist only in books. And books say anything.”⁶

“Any hope must be sober, and built on the sands of despair, free from illusions.”⁷

"Let us offer, then, as a working principle the following: No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children.”⁸

“I stand in awe before the memory of the k’doshim who walked into the gas chambers with the Ani Ma’amin –– I believe! –– on their lips. How dare I question, if they did not question! I believe, because they believed.”⁹

“Tell me: Where is God in all this?”¹⁰

----------
1 Elie Wisel, “A Plea for the Dead.”
2 Ibid.
3 “Berish the Innkeeper,” Elie Wiesel, The Trail of God.
4 Ibid.
5 Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.
6 “Berish the Innkeeper,” Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God.
7 Irving Greenbeerg, “Cloud of Fire, Pillar of Smoke.”
8 Ibid.
9 Eliezer Berkovits, “Faith After the Holocaust.”
10 “Mendel,” Elie Wiesel, The Trial of God.