On Disbelieving Atrocities
Arthur Koestler
1944
We, the screamers, have been at it now for about ten years. We started on the night when the epileptic van der Lubbe set fire to the German Parliament; we said that if you don’t quench those flames at once, they will spread all over the world; you thought we were maniacs. At present we have the mania of trying to tell you about the killing, by hot…
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Creator Bio
Arthur Koestler
Hungarian-British author and journalist Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest and educated in Vienna. He worked as a journalist in Palestine in the late 1920s, and then returned to Europe, where he was arrested and imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War and again in France. Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon (1940), advocating against totalitarian regimes, brought him fame. Koestler settled in England, where he supported political causes and wrote essays, novels, and memoirs. His was one of the earliest voices describing and protesting the Holocaust. His death was self-inflicted, likely motivated by his terminal illnesses.