I love Eddie Izzard. Funniest 8 minutes ever.
”In the ’30s, Hitler: Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Second World War… Russian front not a good idea… Hitler never played Risk when he was a kid. Cause, you know, playing Risk, you could never hold on to Asia. That Asian-Eastern European area, you could never hold it, could you? Seven extra men at the beginning of every go, but you couldn’t fucking hold it. Australasia, that was the one. Australasia. All the purples. Get everyone on Papua New Guinea and just build up and build up…”
”Hitler ended up in a ditch covered in petrol on fire… so, that’s fun. I mean that’s funny. Because he was a mass-murdering fuck-head!”
”We stole countries! That’s how you build an empire. We stole countries with the cunning use of flags! Just sail halfway around the world, stick a flag in. “I claim India for Britain.” And they’re going, “You can’t claim us. We live here! There’s five hundred million of us.” “Do you have a flag?” “We don’t need a bloody flag, this is our country you bastard!” “No flag, no country! You can’t have one. That’s the rules… that… I’ve just made up!”
The first duty of Auschwitzers is to make clear just what a camp is… But let them not forget that the reader will unfailingly ask: But how did it happen that you survived? … Tell, then, how you bought places in the hospital, easy posts, how you shoved the ‘Moslems’ [prisoners who had lost the will to live] into the oven, how you bought women, men, what you did in the barracks, unloading the transports, at the gypsy camp; tell about the daily life of the camp, about the hierarchy of fear, about the loneliness of every man. But write that you, you were the ones who did this. That a portion of the sad fame of Auschwitz belongs to you as well.
“
| — | Tadeusz Borowski [in This Way to the Gas Chamber, Ladies and Gentlemen (his story of his survival of Auschwitz)] |
I want the world to read and to resolve that this must never, never be permitted to happen again.
“
| — | Olga Lengyel (Five Chimneys, her story of Auschwitz) |
There are years and places, sometimes whole decades and entire nations, in which history reveals its menace and destructive force with particular clarity.
“
| — |
Tadeusz Borowski (This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Auschwitz survivor’s story) |
If the Germans win the war, what will the world know about us? They will erect huge buildings, highways, factories, soaring monuments. Our hands will be placed under every brick, and our backs will carry the steel rails and the slabs of concrete. They will kill off our families, our sick, our aged. They will murder our children.
And we shall be forgotten, drowned out by the voices of the poets, the jurists, the philosophers, the priests. They will produce their own beauty, virtue, and truth. They will produce religion.
And we shall be forgotten, drowned out by the voices of the poets, the jurists, the philosophers, the priests. They will produce their own beauty, virtue, and truth. They will produce religion.
“
| — | Tadeusz Borowski (This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen - Auschwitz survivor’s story) |
