Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Michael Barenbaum

American Scholar, Professor, Rabbi, Writer, Lecturer and Film-maker who focused on the memorialization of the Holocaust, Director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum Research Institute, President of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, Executive Editor of the Encyclopedia Judaica

"Envy destroys peace of mind and happiness. An envious person’s life is full of suffering and resentment. He is never happy with what he himself has."

"The reality is you can't come out of understanding the Holocaust by saying that you believe that people are good at heart. People may be good at heart, but the Holocaust is certainly no manifestation of that."

"In a world of relativism we don't know what is bad and we don't know what is good. But the one thing we can agree upon is that this is absolute evil."

"We had information, and we had the information early. We didn't act on that information."

"The Jews were expendable. Their elimination entailed no politically disadvantageous repercussions."