Deafening Silence

(While at Punganur...)

Last month I wrote a small playlet, for the Independence day. It was based on a short text I read somewhere. Never really knew the origin of it, till today. As I was preparing my class for the 10th standard students, the textbook opened up to this page where I found the same text with a short note about the origin of it.

Pastor Niemoeller, a resistance fighter, during the brutal Nazi regime of Hitler in Germany, observed an absence of protest, an uncanny silence amongst ordinary Germans in the face of brutal and organised crimes committed against people in the Nazi empire. He wrote movingly about this silence.

First they came for the Communists,
Well, I was not a Communist
So I said nothing. 

Then they came for the Social Democrats,
Well, I was not a Social Democrat
So I did nothing. 

Then they came for the trade unionists,
But I was not a trade unionist.
And then they came for the Jews,
But I was not a Jew – so I did little. 

Then when they came for me,
There was no one left who could stand up for me.