First They Came: Holocaust Remembrance Day

(via)

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. And while our memories should be of all the lives snuffed out, and the loss to humanity when someone decided that these six million here, these millions of others there could be done without, I can’t help remembering this chilling photo. These are just coworkers enjoying each other’s company–only, these are SS personnel working at Auschwitz. Coworkers taking time to laugh and blow off steam with each other…when their job is industrialized murder.

We would do well, in our own time, to remember that monsters aren’t always monstrous. They eat and they laugh and they smile and they have fun. That’s what makes monsters truly scary: not how monstrous they are, but how like us they are.

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

–Pastor Martin Niemoller