First they came

A note about the nation's silence regarding a bloody regime.

"First they came …" a quote from the German pastor Martin Niemöller when he tried to explain the inaction of German intellectuals and their non-resistance to the Nazis.

In November 1945, Niemöller visited the former Dachau concentration camp, where he had been a prisoner from 1941 to April 1945. An entry in his diary shows that this visit was the impetus for the famous quote (nowadays, few versions of the quote exist).

"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 me

And there was no one left to speak out for me".

This post is my visual response to numerous comments from Russians about an authoritarian state and the impossibility of writing the word "war.

For the poster, I used one of the film photos I made in August 2015.

The building with a security camera embodies dictatorship.