Billy shook his head in disbelief. How could this have happened when there were cameras and newspapers and everybody knew what was happening, everywhere. He couldn’t grasp the enormity of what he was reading.

“Hi Sport, what’cha reading?” his father nonchalantly said as he wandered through the house. He had the lawn to mow and the shed to paint this weekend; he was just saying something to acknowledge the young boy’s presence; he didn’t really want a chat. Then he saw the glistening in the twelve year old’s eyes. Then he saw the history book.

“How could this have happened? How?”

William sat down beside his son. “Maybe you’re too young to understand yet. It was a long time ago, and we learned never to let it happen again, son.”

“This girl is the same age as me. She’s being shipped off to a concentration camp. She’ll probably die there. If she wasn’t too young for it to happen to her, then I’m not to young to know, am I? Father, how did you let it happen?” He looked up at the man who he had idolised, the man who would protect him from all dangers; the cloak of invincible omniscience had slipped.

“We didn’t know.” he answered weakly. “They kept it secret. It was a very locked down, controlled country.”

“But the papers reported it; it says so. Look, here’s a headline: ‘Whole Families have Disappeared’”

“Well, you know, not many of us read the newspapers.” Even as he said it, he knew he wasn’t being totally honest, but how to defend himself? How to defend his whole generation for allowing this all to happen under their noses. It had been a case of ‘don’t criticise the neighbours’ writ large to a whole nation.

“That’s not true either. Everybody read the newspapers. You know they did.” Yes, he knew they did. He knew that as a young man he had read the paper, had skipped the stories he didn’t like, had got annoyed by the unions on strike or the fascist in East London. He had been willing to comment on these small events while whole towns were emptied of their people because they had the wrong face, or the wrong hair, or the wrong name; or, it turned out (which he really hadn’t know) the early IBM in that country had willingly collaborated in using auto-sorted card indexes to identify people with parents, grandparents who were the wrong sort.

The man had the option to admit it was all wrong and they should have done more, or defend the indefensible. He went for the second option and lost the respect of his son. It would have happened at some time, it always did; that the child realises their parent has feet of clay. But it would have been better to have had feet of clay and admit that all are found wanting, no-one is perfect.

...

The years move on and the child becomes a man, he marries and has children and has the normal worries of job and mortgage and pension and finds the pains felt so acutely in childhood - the clear black and white of good and bad, right and wrong – become multiple greys. Occasionally he would hear of a famine and feel guilty that he has more than enough. He even starts to rationalise that people living hand to mouth are used to it so they feel it less stressfully than he and his family would. He knows he has put on the armour of hypocrisy.