Alicia Zhang 7: Silence

 

    This year I took AP European History class, and it's gotten me thinking about human nature. I'm a quiet kid. People ask me to speak up all the time, and I'm usually not the one to start conversations. But not everyone is like me, and most enjoy hanging out with others and talking about a broad range of topics. They debate, argue, and gossip for the sake of gossiping. So why is it that at certain critical points in history, their voices fall silent? Why is it that when injustice surrounds them, when they know of the suffering of others, they stay within the party lines, and jump on the bandwagon of tyranny?

   I believe that silence might as well be tacit approval of the cruel actions taken by dictators and extremists at these junctures in history. Even if you say to yourself in the confines of your heart and home that what they are doing is wrong, it won't change anything unless you speak up instead of biting your tongue in the face of the wrongdoers. The first example that comes to mind of the consequences of this silence is the rise of the Nazi party. They were originally a fringe group that was ill-regarded and ridiculed, but as time went by and they grew in power and numbers, the voices of those who originally spoke up against them died out. It's more than likely that the vast majority of Germany, at least not the ones indoctrinated from childhood, were inwardly skeptical of Nazi ideals and philosophy, but they chose to remain quiet and conform rather than be excluded by others. There was so little open resistance in Germany during WWII that the only significant actors that stand out in my memory were the White Rose group, made up of college youths, and those behind the failed 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Silence is the victory anthem that plays for dictators and extremists, and the funeral hymn for detractors. 

   Once we have fallen silent, we have given up our rights as an individual and submitted to the collective. It doesn't have to be on as treacherously grand a scale as the rise of Nazi Germany; it could be 20 children pretending ignorance as 10 taunt a child to depression and death. The words "I don't care" are sometimes the first step to agony of another, and a terrible guilt when all is said and done. So don't look the other way when someone is hurting, because that someone could be you one day. Silence is not always golden, and it especially shouldn't be when that silence costs others.