Fill in the blank.
First they came for …… and I did not speak out – because I was not a ……
The blank could be any category of people. Just because I am not belong to the certain category I am safe? Do not be silly, because for the oppressor, there are only 2 categories:
Surprise? It is nothing about certain religion or race or so. So do not buy into the lie of oppressor. Before I become the victim of injustice, help where I can, speak out for injustice, hold on to the value that I believe.
But for Victor E. Franck (survivor of the concentration camps), there are also only 2 categories of people (two races).
there are two races of men in this world, but only these two-the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of “pure race”-and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.
I know which race I want to belong to, still, if I am not careful enough, I would easily fall into the race that I do not want to belong to. We need each other to remember the history, the truth and the kind of people that we want to be.
Today, I am thinking of those people who were arrested because of injustice around the world. A message from an inmate of world war two concentration camp:
But for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day comes when, looking back on his camp experiences, he can no longer understand how he endured it all. As the day of his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare.
The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more-except his God.
Viktor E. Frankl