First they Came...

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
(Martin Niemoller)

     This statement of Martin Niemöller reflect on the attitude of the people before the war a lot, and it also seems like a sarcasm to them. When Hitler first come to attack the Jews, people who were not Jews wasn't concerned, because they are not the target! Many people just let it pass because they are afraid to speak up, so they just silently watch these things happening and allow these people, the Nazi, to take the Jews, Gypsies, handicaps, and homosexual into these concentration camps and be torture to death.

     Pastor Martin want people to realize that a community and individual are not opposite, a person cannot survive by its own, they'll need help from other too! So when problems are coming after you, you need to work together with others too! You need to act, even though the oppressive is not on you, otherwise you'll soon face everything alone. He want the people that time to understand, just sitting and watching the bad guys oppressing on the innocent yet they are still able to make no sound is not reasonable! That's not how a community works! Probably even the Nazi show more team work then them!

With this said, it's reasonable to say that it's not ALL Nazi's responsiblilty for such a tragedy like this to happen, the whole community has responsibility too. How can you even remain silent during such a horrible time? Plus, you can say the power of Nazi was given by the people, because they voted on Hilter. Since they chose Hilter, you can say that they are expecting something good for the society from him, right? Or else why did they voted for him? So now Hitler was elected, and he form the Nazi armies and plan all these kind of terrible punishment on these certain type of people, how can the rest of the people still remain silent? They should speak up, because this is who they voted for doing something they are not expecting from him. But instead of standing up for these people, they chose to ignore it. Probably they are afraid of the power of the Nazi or whatever, but this is not a good enough excuse for these people to remain silent...they allow these people to come back over and over again until over 12 million innocent people were killed! And the final end and rescue for these victim didn't even come from the people of German itself...how sad?

The same ideas apply til now, even in my own life, I feel like I have full responsiblilty for what is happening now in my family and school, but a little bit less for what's happening in this city and the world.
It is obvious that each family member have full responsiblilty in what is happening inside the house, because family unit is the first and the base unit of a person's life (mostly). For example, responsibilities like the cleaness of the house, different chores, and the attitude and emotion of each other(sometimes). Sometimes an attitude or a belief of a person was influence by our family member, since that is who we are closest to.

Now for my school, I feel like I have full responsibility in what is happening too! One reason is because our school is much smaller than normal academy. But things such as school events, rumors, and the reputation of the school, everyone is responsible. Sometimes it only take a person's action for a lot more others to do the same too! If one student decides not to go on SA Day, probably ten more students won't want to go, if one student decides to go to Saturday cinema, probably ten more students will go, this is how the responsibility of an individual comes in. If one person did something wrong and was kick out of the school, other people, probably other school or the parents will start wondering on the quality of the students in the school. The same way, if one student get to go to a really famous college, the parents and student from other school will start to think that the school is good! Same goes with rumor, if someone start a rumor of someone, it will pass to everyone's ear within a week! Another thing that I think we as a part of a school has responsibility for is the oppression inside the school . If a kid is bully by a group of students, we should stand up because it's wrong.

Now for a city and the world, I feel like as an individual, you have less responsibility. Because the world is too big you can't really know what is happening. Like the thing happening in Africa right now, you can't say a student in Taiwan has responsibility to it, because they don't even know about it! But the responsiblilty that I might give to the world is if I see and know about it but yet I chose to ignore because I believe my vote is not much of a deal, then it's my responsibility for whatever happens afterward. For example, now I know about this thing happening in Africa and I know that people are trying to let others to know through different media, if I chose to ignore, then I have a part of responsibility to what will happen in the future. Some other responsiblilty as an individual to the world are like the idea of littering and voting(I don't think I need to explain since we kind of discuss it after class). I think these three ideas also apply in a city and a country.

Anne Frank timeline

http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/28479/Betty-Liao-English-II/