Thought for the Week: Speak up, speak out!
Stevie Krayer considers the message of Holocaust Memorial Day 2012
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
- Martin Niemöller
The theme chosen for Holocaust Memorial Day 2012, 27 January, is certainly a stirring one: ‘Speak up, speak out’. And what better argument could there be for speaking out than Martin Niemöller’s famous litany on the consequences of silence? The call to overcome cowardice, inertia and despair, and to stand up for justice is almost irresistible.
Yet there may be good reasons, as well as bad excuses, for silence. In my reckless, arrogant and self-righteous younger days, I never hesitated to speak up – aged fourteen, I had the chutzpah to rebuke a geography teacher for a racist comment in front of the whole class! But as you get older, things start to look a bit more nuanced. Even if you are sure right is on your side, you may hold back – less to protect yourself than to shield your family from persecution or your community from a backlash.
Like hundreds of other secret helpers of the Jews at the time of the Holocaust, the Quakers judged that speaking out was a self-indulgence that would sabotage their chances of spiriting people away from danger. Were they right or wrong? We live in a different age. Thanks to the internet and instant communications you would think that nowadays oppression must be impossible to cover up and, therefore, keeping mum is pointless. Yet, wherever you look in the world injustice flourishes under a cloak of silence or disinformation.
So in the end the scales probably come down on the side of speaking out – all the more so since we are lucky enough to live in a country where we (mostly) do not risk torture or ‘disappearance’. Perhaps that is why Niemöller’s conclusion now seems a bit self-serving. For Quakers, it is not about ‘me’. As the poet Gwyneth Lewis wrote for Holocaust Memorial Day 2006: ‘I can only be well when others are free / And right has a price I’m prepared to pay.’
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