"It has been estimated that over 100 million books were destroyed during the Holocaust, in the twelve years from the period of Nazi dominance in Germany in 1933 up to the end of the Second World War."

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."

"Nazi Germany sought control over people's beliefs, not just their bodies and territory. From the 1933 state-sanctioned book burnings in Germany to the purging of libraries across Europe as nations were conquered by the Nazis, "un-German" reading material was threatened with extinction. The scale of destruction was impressive. By V-E Day, it is estimated that Germany had destroyed over 100 million books in Europe."

"On May 10, 1933, thousands of the banned books were collected in Berlin's Opera Square for an event called Feuersprüche, or "Fire Incantations." … As each book was thrown in, a student announced the reason this particular book was being "sentenced to death." The reasons were stated like criminal charges. The books of Sigmund Freud, for instance, were charged with spiritual corruption and "the exaggeration and unhealthy complication of sexuality." After reading the charge, the student threw the book into the pile while declaring, "I commit to the flames the works of Sigmund Freud!" Other charges included "Judeo-democratic tendencies"; "mutilation of the German language"; and "literary betrayal of the soldiers of the Great War." Once the pile was complete, it was drenched with gasoline and set on fire."

"Mike Lindell: "'The Big Lie' is the big lie." Steve Bannon: [Laughter] Is that like a Zen koan? Like "the sound of one hand clapping in the forest"?!"

"The American Psychological Society (APS) defines a "big lie" as “a propaganda device in which a false statement of extreme magnitude is constantly repeated to persuade the public. The assumption is that a Big Lie is less likely to be challenged than a lesser one because people will assume that evidence exists to support a statement of such magnitude.”"

"It was called ‘the Big Lie’ technique...Just sound like you know what you’re talking about — as if you’re reciting facts. Talk very fast. Weave your lies... and repeat your assertions over and over again. Those who want an excuse to hate or blame — those with big but weak egos — will leap at a simple, neat explanation for the way the world is. Those types will never call you on the facts."

"One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. the English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."

"All this was inspired by the principle — which is quite true in itself — that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to largescale falsehood. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. From time immemorial, however, the Jews have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race? And what a race! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the Jews for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He (Arthur Schopenhauer) called the Jew “The Great Master of Lies.” Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping Truth to prevail."

"The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to "End Poverty in California" I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."

"As Lenin, Goebbels and other masters of lies knew, it is sufficient to repeat a big lie often enough, to make it pass as truth."

"As the children [of the Gods], these Germanic tribes burst forth into the midst of Semitico-Roman culture and lent it the pure strength of their blood. . . . As soon as they entered history, with the frankness of their blue eyes, their proud heroic stature, their simple patriarchal customs, their free communal associations, their loyal warlike confederations, their representations of the gods and their simple, honest, heroic traditions, they must undoubtedly have appeared from the outset as the true manifestation, without blurring or mixing, of the most noble ancient branch of the white race. Such is the Aryan."

"The invention of an Aryan race in nineteenth century Europe was to have, as we all know, far-reaching consequences on world history. Its application to European societies culminated in the ideology of Nazi Germany. Another sequel was that it became foundational to the interpretation of early Indian history and there have been attempts at a literal application of the theory to Indian society. Some European scholars now describe it as a nineteenth century myth. But some contemporary Indian political ideologies seem determined to renew its life. In this they are assisted by those who still carry the imprint of this nineteenth century theory and treat it as central to the question of Indian identity. With the widespread discussion on 'Aryan origins' in the print media and the controversy over its treatment in school textbooks, it has become the subject of a larger debate in terms of its ideological underpinnings rather than merely the differing readings among archaeologists and historians."

"The Latin malus ["bad") (beside which I set melas ["black"]) may designate the common man as the dark-colored, above all as the black-haired man ("hie niger est-"), as the pre-Aryan occupant of the soil of Italy who was distinguished most obviously from the blond, that is Aryan, conqueror race by his color; Gaelic, at any rate, offers us a precisely similar case- fin (for example in the name Fin-Gal), the distinguished word for nobility, finally for the good, noble, pure, originally meant the blond-headed, in contradistinction to the dark, black-haired aboriginal inhabitants."

"Articles under the heading Arier were included in the big popular encyclopaedias of Brockhaus and Meyer from 1864 and 1867 respectively, and the Arier is defined from the start as Indo-Germanic. The 14th edition of Brockhaus states specifically that it is better to apply the term Arier only to "Asian Aryans" and to use the term Indo-Germanic or Indo-European to describe the "European Aryans"."

"Taylor rejected the association between race and language altogether. He found the theory of a single Aryan migration out of Asia “extremely shadowy … [resting] on no solid grounds whatever” (1890: 17)."

"Both Gobineau and Chamberlain transformed the Aryan concept, which had its humble origins in philological research conducted by Jones in Calcutta at the end of the eighteenth century, into the political and racial doctrines of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich."

"The prophecy which the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus."

"It is in their ambience that racialism really emerged both as an ideology and a sociological theory. Scholars from Sir William Jones by way of the brothers Grimm and Max Muller produced not merely the genealogy of the Indo-European languages but the atmosphere in which Aryan language could be identified with an Aryan culture and even an Aryan race in whose names crimes could be committed ... much mid-nineteenth century philological speculation is already tinged with racial ideology."

"Race as it was used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been totally discredited os a useful concept in human biology…. There is no reason to believe today that there ever was an Aryan race that spoke Indo-European languages and was possessed with a coherent and well-defined set of Aryan or Indo-European cultural features."

"To speak of an Aryan race of three thousand years ago is to put forward a gratuitous hypothesis; but to speak of it as if it still existed today is quite simply absurd."

"Reinach challenged the very concept of an Aryan race—“To speak of an Aryan race … is to put forward a gratuitous hypothesis; to speak of it as though it still existed today is quite simply to talk nonsense” (1892: 90)."

"How could one recognize an Aryan, living or dead, when the biological criteria for Aryanness are non-existent?"

"Though it were proved that there was never an Aryan race in the past, yet we desire that in the future there may be one. This is the decisive standpoint for men of action."

"The word ariane, Aryan, had taken on an equally bizarre meaning when applied to Fascist Italy: a swarthy Southern Catholic was Aryan whereas a blond and blue-eyed Milanese Jew was not. . . . Fascist words certainly pushed [the] ridiculous to the limit: one could become Aryan, which would seem to be biologically impossible. Children of mixed marriages who had been baptized by a certain time were officially Aryan . . . But trying to be Aryan or discriminated had a price . . . The idea of an Italian Aryan race, already laughable was rendered more absurd by the possibility of being Aryanized. All one had to do was prove that one's father was not Jewish but Aryan and one did that by claiming that one was born as a result of one's mother's adultery."

"To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dictionary or a grammar."

"Aryan people first emerge from the gloom of prehistory on the northern borders of the Fertile Crescent of the Ancient East... (the first Aryans were racially Nordics and) the Nordic's superiority in physique fitted them to be vehicles of a superior language."

"Skepticism in scholarly circles grew rapidly after 1880. The obvious impossibility of actually locating the Aryan homeland; the increasing complexity of the problem with every addition to our knowledge of prehistoric cultures; the even more remote possibility of ever learning anything conclusive regarding the traits of the mythical "original Aryans"; the increasing realization that all the historical peoples were much mixed in blood and that the role of a particular race in a great melange of races, though easy to exaggerate, is impossible to determine, the ridiculous and humiliating spectacle of eminent scholars subordinating their interests in truth to the inflation of racial and national pride—all these and many other reasons led scholars to declare either that the Aryan doctrine was a figment of the professional imagination or that it was incapable of clarification because the crucial evidence was lost, apparently forever."

"In a prehistoric era lost in the mists of time, a whole race, destined by Providence to reign one day supreme over the entire earth, was slowly growing in the primeval cradle, in which it was preparing for a brilliant future…. Favoured among all others by the beauty of its blood and the gifts of its intelligence, … this was the race of the Aryas, blessed from the beginning with the very qualities which the Hebrews lacked in order to become civilizers of the world…. The religion of Christ was destined to become the torch of humanity: the Greek genius welcomed it; the power of Rome propagated it far end wide, Germanic energy it new strength. Through a thousand battles, the whole race of the European Aryas … came to be the main instrument of God’s designs for the destiny of mankind."

"All the peoples of Europe and, to begin with, those which were originally related and which gained supremacy at the cost of many wanderings and dangers, emigrated from Asia in the remote past. They were propelled from East to West by an irresistable instinct (unhemmbarer Trieb), the real cause of which is unknown to us.... The vocation and courage of those peoples, which were originally related and destined to rise to such heights, is shown by the fact that European history was almost entirely made by them."

"There are Aryan and Semitic languages, [but] it goes against all rules of logic to speak, without an expressed or implied qualification, of an Aryan race, of Aryan blood, or Aryan skulls."

"Race theories conquered the intellectual scene, fitting neatly with the Europe-to-India scenario for the spread of Indo-European. It all fell into place: the Aryans had been white Nordic people who, with their inborn superiority, had developed a culture and technology which allowed them to subdue less advanced races: dark-haired Mediterraneans and West-Asians, and dark-skinned Indians. The linguistic "aryanization" of India by white Aryan invaders from Europe formed a complete case study of all that the upcoming racist worldview stood for."

"The new theory of Language has unquestionably produced a new theory of Race . . . If you examine the bases proposed for common nationality before the new knowledge growing out of the study of Sanskrit had popularized in Europe, you will find them extremely unlike those which are now advocated and even passionately advocated in part of the Continent."

"In modern linguistics the term Aryan is sometimes used to refer to all Indo-Germans, but the term Indo-Germans or Indo-Europeans is preferable [to describe the European Aryans], since in linguistics the term Aryan is usually only applied to the Indian and Iranian Indo-Germans."

"The theory of the Aryan race set up by Western writers falls to the ground at every point… the theory is based on nothing but pleasing assumptions and inferences based on such assumptions… Not one of these assumptions is borne out by facts… The originators of the Aryan race theory are so eager to establish their case that they have no patience to see what absurdities they land themselves in… The assumption is that the Indo-Germanic (sic) people are the purest of the modem representatives of the original Aryan race."

"The Aryan race theory is so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago. But far from being dead, the theory has a considerable hold upon the people. . . . The first explanation is to be found in the support which the theory receives from Brahmin scholars. This is a very strange phenomenon. As Hindus, they should ordinarily show a dislike for the Aryan theory with its express avowal of the superiority of the European races over the Asiatic races. But the Brahmin scholar has not only no such aversion but most willingly hails it. The reasons are obvious. The Brahmin believes in the two nation theory. He claims to be the representative of the Aryan race, and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans. The theory helps him establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and their superiority. . . . it helps him maintain and justify his overlordship over the non-Brahmins."

"Western Philology has converted it [the word arya] into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values."

"The Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that [should] best be exterminated."

"He [Jayaprakash Narayan] demanded the defense of the “political and human rights” of the Bengalis, and decried a “holocaust” carried out by a “Hitlerian junta in power in Islamabad.”"

"We cannot let Pakistan continue this holocaust."

"She saw no signs of political accommodation from Yahya. India, she wrote, was “greatly embarrassed” by the recent news of fresh U.S. arms shipments to Pakistan... —she reached shocking rhetorical heights: “Would the League of Nations Observers have succeeded in persuading the refugees who fled from Hitler’s tyranny to return even whilst the pogroms against the Jews and political opponents of Nazism continued unabated?” This was hardly the first Indian use of Nazi imagery. Countless Indian officials had accused Pakistan of genocide; Jayaprakash Narayan spoke of a “Hitlerian junta” in Islamabad; and Haksar had privately written that Pakistan’s propaganda was “based, as always, on the pattern set by Gobbels.” But here was the prime minister of India, in a formal letter to the president of the United States, comparing a U.S. ally to Nazi Germany."

"What Hitler wants in Europe, Jinnah wants in India."

"We should certainly like an impartial investigation into the events of those days and we have no doubt it will be found that while, on the Indian side, it was the spontaneous outburst of a people indignant at what they considered the weakness and the appeasement policy of their leadership, on the Muslim side, the League, the bureaucracy, the police and the army worked like Hitler’s team with the tacit if not open approval of those in charge of the Pakistan Government.”"

"When Nehru returned after a brief visit to Europe in 1938, he was struck by the similarity between the propaganda methods of the Muslim League in India and the Nazis in Germany: 'The League leaders had begun to echo the Fascist tirade against democracy... Nazis were wedded to a negative policy. So also was the League. The League was anti-Hindu, anti-Congress, anti-national... The Nazis raised the cry of hatred against the Jews, the League [had] raised [its] cry against the Hindus.'"

"In London, exhausted, Gandhi seemed close to breaking under the strain. She once again went clangingly heavy on the Nazi analogies, saying that she could no more meet with Yahya before the woes of the Bengali refugees were addressed than Winston Churchill could have met with Adolf Hitler before the end of World War II. When a British reporter challenged her for supporting the Mukti Bahini, for a moment she seemed almost overcome with anger and grief, blinking rapidly and swallowing hard, but not faltering. Did quieting the situation “mean we support the genocide?” she shot back with steely fury. “When Hitler was on the rampage, why didn’t you tell us keep quiet and let’s have peace in Germany and let the Jews die, or let Belgium die, let France die?”"

"We are deeply troubled by the Taliban’s continual repression of its people. Particularly painful, with its unavoidable connections to history, is the order requiring all Hindus in Afghanistan to wear an identity label ontheir clothing. This is an extension of the Taliban’s policy of religious intolerance and a stark reminder of the exclusionary tactics employed by the Nazis as a precursor to genocide. The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan have adopted a policy that more than 60 years ago spelled the beginning of the end for six million Jews. The Holocaust began with the ostracizing of the Jewish people and their forced separation from society, which can be the only purpose of labeling "others" as outsiders. In Nazi-occupied Europe, the badge of shame was the yellow Star of David worn as a patch. In Afghanistan, the Taliban rulers today are ordering Hindus to wear a similar label to enable Muslims to identify them. This is a clearly a policy founded on intolerance, mistrust and religious hatred. One would hope that we have learned from history. Following the recent desecration ofstatutes in Afghanistan, it has now progressed to marking people. We cannot help but ask, "What comes next?" We call on the international community and all religious leaders to immediately speak out against this practice."