Holocaust Memorial Day 2017 Quotes: Moving Sayings To Honor Victims And Survivors On Day Of Remembrance

Friday marks the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Holocaust's largest Nazi death camp. Since 2005, the day has been designated Holocaust Memorial Day, an observance where people across the world remember the 11 million victims of the genocide as well as those who survived.

The Holocaust began after the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, came to power in Germany in 1933. It formally ended in 1945, but the effects are felt around the world even today. In honor of Friday's day of remembrance, here are 11 quotes to honor all those who died and those who lived.

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” — Elie Wiesel

“The Holocaust is not only a tragedy of the Jewish people, it is a failure of humanity as a whole.” — Moshe Katsav

“Six million of our people live on in our hearts. We are their eyes that remember. We are their voice that cries out. The dreadful scenes flow from their dead eyes to our open ones. And those scenes will be remembered exactly as they happened.” — Shimon Peres

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” — Wiesel

“Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what I can do for those who have not survived.” — Simon Wiesenthal

“Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.” — Jane Yolen

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” — Primo Levi

“Thou shalt not be a victim, though shalt not be a perpetrator, but above all, though shall not be a bystander.” — Yehuda Bauer

“We played, we laughed, we were loved. We were ripped from the arms of our parents and thrown into the fire. We were nothing more than children. We had a future. We were going to be lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers. We had dreams, then we had no hope. We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars, no air to breathe, smothering, crying, starving, dying. Separated from the world to be no more. From the ashes, hear our plea. This atrocity to mankind can not happen again. Remember us, for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away.” — Barbara Sonek

“For the survivor death is not the problem. Death was an everyday occurrence. We learned to live with death. The problem is to adjust to life, to living. You must teach us about living.” — Wiesel

“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” — Anne Frank