Wiesel

"As for the Nazis, we spoke of them as of a disagreeable disease, not serious and surely not fatal. We told ourselves: Every society has its misfits, and so does ours, one day they would be discarded, thrown into the trashcan of history. The threats, the ramblings, the obscene delirium of a Goebbels or a Goering or their ridiculous Fuhrer did not even annoy us. We thought: They are barking, let them bark, surely they will wear themselves out. Hauptmann called Nazism a marginal sect. Lacking education and mass support, it could not possibly influence events. History cannot be changed by a few anti-Semitic speeches. Fighting them would give them too much importance, do them too much honor. Better not turn them into adversaries. Our real adversaries were much closer: the trade union movement, the Socialists, the Social Democrats. The Nazis were no more than a diversion."


May 18, 1995