holocaust
hŏl′ə-kôst″, hō′lə-
noun

1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.
2. The genocide of European Jews and other groups by the Nazis during World War II.
3. A massive slaughter.

Here are some quotes for you. From holocaust survivors and their relatives.

“I totally embrace the comparison to the Holocaust. I feel that violence and suffering of innocents are unjust. I believe that the abuse of humans and animals and the earth come from the same need to dominate others. I feel that I could not save my family, my people, but each time I talk about cruelty to animals and being vegetarian I might be saving another life. After knowing what I know about the Holocaust and about animal exploitation I cannot be anything else but an animal rights advocate.

-Susan Kalev, who lost her father and her sister in the Holocaust

“I believe in what Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, ‘In their behavior towards creatures, all men are Nazis.’ Human beings see their own oppression vividly when they are the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.” [tweet this]

-“Hacker,” Animal Liberation Front member & Holocaust survivor

“What do they know—all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them [the animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” [tweet this]

-Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish author, Nobel Laureate, & Holocaust survivor

“I spent my childhood years in the Warsaw Ghetto where almost my entire family was murdered along with about 350,000 other Polish Jews. People sometimes will ask me whether that experience had anything to do with my work for animals. It didn’t have a little to do with my work for animals, it had everything to do with my work for animals.”

-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor

“When I see cages crammed with chickens from battery farms thrown on trucks like bundles of trash, I see, with the eyes of my soul, the Umschlagplatz (where Jews were forced onto trains leaving for the death camps). When I go to a restaurant and see people devouring meat, I feel sick. I see a holocaust on their plates.” [tweet this]

-Georges Metanomski, a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

“I dedicate my mother’s grave to geese. My mother doesn’t have a grave, but if she did I would dedicate it to the geese. I was a goose too.”

-Marc Berkowitz, Animal activist & survivor of Josef Mengele’s “twin experiments”

“In 1975, after I immigrated to the United States, I happened to visit a slaughterhouse, where I saw terrified animals subjected to horrendous crowding conditions while awaiting their deaths. Just as my family members were in the notorious Treblinka death camp. I saw the same efficient and emotionless killing routine as in Treblinka, I saw the neat piles of hearts, hooves, and other body parts. So reminiscent of the piles of Jewish hair, glasses and shoes in Treblinka.”

-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor

"Jews have been, while animals still are, treated like nothing, as if their lives don’t matter. You can also compare the two holocausts this way. [...] Go to the nearest cow or pig slaughterhouse and remove the animals and replace them with humans. You have now re-created Birkenau."

-Gary Yourosky