“We moved back to Romania when I was thirteen, and my world was shattered. I hated Bucharest, its society, and its mores — its anti-Semitism for example. I was not Jewish, but I pronounced my r’s as the French do and was often taken for a Jew, for which I was ruthlessly bullied.… It was the time of the rise of Nazism and everyone was becoming pro-Nazi — writers, teachers, biologists, historians … It was a plague! They despised France and England because they were yiddified and racially impure.”

— Eugéne Ionesco

The Paris Review interview (1984)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We moved back to Romania when I was thirteen, and my world was shattered. I hated Bucharest, its society, and its mores…" by Eugéne Ionesco?

Eugéne Ionesco 59

Romanian playwright 1909–1994

Related quotes

“No Jewish blood runs among my blood,
but I am as bitterly and hardly hated
by every anti-semite
as if I were a Jew. By this
I am a Russian.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

"Babiy Yar" (1961), line 58; Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi (trans.) Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 2008) pp. 83-4.

“Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”

Hajo Meyer (1924–2014) Dutch physicist

Quoted in Graeme Murray and Chris Watt, " Auschwitz survivor: 'Israel acts like Nazis' http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/auschwitz-survivor-israel-acts-like-nazis-1.1000918", Sunday Herald, January 24, 2010. Retrieved on March 27, 2010.

“Since its inception, Zionism's Jewish supremacy borrowed much from anti-Semitic rhetoric. Not only did Herzl agree with anti-Semites that it was Jews who 'caused' anti-Semitism but also with the anti-Semitic conclusion that the end of anti-Semitism could only be brought about by the removal of Jews from gentile societies.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

“European anti-Semites, Zionism believes that European Jews, unlike European Christians, are not Europeans but foreigners who need to leave Europe to its 'real' people and be 'repatriated' to their own state in Palestine. Today's Israeli Jewish supremacists are reviving anti-Semitic ideas of the turn of the century that had accused Jews of seeking to control the world. From the infamous czarist Protocols of the Elders of Zion to genocidal Nazi propaganda, Jews as a 'power-hungry' people was a notion that was part and parcel of the anti-Semitic lexicon. Today's Israeli Jewish supremacists seem to agree with the anti-Semites that, if Jews do not control the world, they at least control America.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle"

“I thought back to Europe being invaded by the Nazi army with great sadness … For me, seeing Europe had been everything. When I came back to Cuba, I was taken aback by its nature, by the traditions of the Blacks, and by the transculturation of its African and Catholic religions. And so I began to orientate my paintings toward the African.”

Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) Cuban artist

On painting after returning to Cuba in “Wifredo Lam: Man of the World” https://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/wifredo-lam-man-of-world (Tate; 2016 Aug 16)

“I read the first edition of 'Mein Kampf' when it came out in 1923 and even then I knew Hitler meant what he said. I knew the history of anti-Semitism going back for centuries, and I knew all about pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. When I grew up and whent to school in Moscow, I experienced anti-Semitism and the restrictions on where Jews could live and work. Hitler systemized anti-Semitism. Pogroms are my business… Oh yes, I could be a professor of anti-Semitism.”

Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) American photographer

Testament to a Lost People

“I do not pretend to sustain the order. At the time of its publication I was insensed by a reprimand recieved from Washington for permitting acts which the Jews, within my lines, were engaged in.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1860s, Letter to Isaac N. Morris (1868)

“I do not pretend to sustain the order. At the time of its publication I was insensed by a reprimand received from Washington for permitting acts which the Jews, within my lines, were engaged in.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1860s, Letter to Isaac N. Morris (1868)

“Baruch Spinoza, the excommunicated Jew, made the Jewish cultural position in the West not only tenable, but impregnable. But the same Baruch Spinoza was actually responsible for the cultural anti-Semitism of modern Europe. He shaped the strong anti-Jewish attitude of his greatest admirers, followers, and adepts Herder, Goethe, Hegel, and Fichte. They were outspoken Jew-haters. They admired Spinoza, but with their master hated his race and its world-picture.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God (1933)

“I hate tyranny, at least I think I do; but I hate it most of all where most are concerned in it. The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. If, as society is constituted in these large countries of France and England, full of unequal property, I must make my choice (which God avert!) between the despotism of a single person, or of the many, my election is made. As much injustice and tyranny has been practised in a few months by a French democracy, as in all the arbitrary monarchies in Europe in the forty years of my observation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 96
1790s

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Eugéne Ionesco 59

Related quotes

Related topics