Isaac Bashevis Singer
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer lost all of his family in the Holocaust, yet repeatedly compared the way humans treat animals to the way Jews were treated by the Nazis:
"In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him and who, because of him, had left this earth. 'What do they know—all those scholars, all those philosophers, all the leaders of the world—about such as you? 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, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka. And yet man demands compassion from heaven.'” [My emphases] (Singer, 1984b, 271)
More of his vivid quotations can be found at the following link:
www.ivu.org/history/northam20b/singer.html