“In order to fly, you have to give up the ground you are standing on.”

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.

I write to understand as much as to be understood.

My faith is a wounded faith, but my life is not without faith. I didn’t divorce God, but I’m quarrelling and arguing and questioning, it’s a wounded faith.

To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice.

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering… The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.

Every moment is a new beginning.

No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.

You’re shaking … so am I. It’s because of Jerusalem, isn’t it? One doesn’t go to Jerusalem, one returns to it. That’s one of its mysteries.

The most important question a human being has to face. What is it? The question, Why are we here?

In the beginning there was faith – which is childish; trust – which is vain; and illusion – which is dangerous.

For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. Not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are responsible for what we do with those memories

An indifference to suffering makes humans inhuman

Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.

When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity.