Martin Niemöller’s words are always apt

RTE 2 last evening screened Countdown to Surrender - the Last 100 days. It is about the final days of World War ll.

When the concentration camp in Buchenwald was liberated the inhabitants of nearby Weimar were forced to visit the camp to see and smell for themselves what had happened.

The narrator commented that all during the Hitler years no one said anything and no one wanted to know.

How often that’s the story that allows evil to prevail.

When one sees evil first-hand it is a shocking experience. And it does not have to be anything like the scale of what Hitler did.

And then to observe the collaborators, and those who refuse to say a word, those who don’t want to know. The officials and line managers who allow evil to happen.

It is awful. But the day of reckoning comes like day following night. And then.

Martin Niemöller’s words

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me