Gunter Grass 'What Must Be Said' translation

“Was gesagt werden muss” (“What must be said”) by Gunter Grass translation by Michael R. Burch Why have I remained silent, so long, failing to mention something openly practiced in war games which now threaten to leave us merely meaningless footnotes? Someone’s alleged “right” to strike first might annihilate a beleaguered nation whose people march to a martinet’s tune, compelled to pageants of orchestrated obedience. Why? Merely due to the suspicion that Iranians might build a bomb. Why do I hesitate, forbidding myself to name that other nation, where, for years shrouded in secrecy a formidable nuclear program has existed beyond all control because no inspections were ever allowed? This universal concealment abetted by my own incriminating silence now feels like a heavy, enforced lie, an oppressive inhibition, a vice, a strong constraint, which, if dismissed, immediately incurs the verdict “anti-Semitism.” But now my own country, guilty of its unprecedented crimes which continually demand remembrance, once again seeking financial gain (although with glib lips we call it “reparations”) has delivered yet another submarine to Israel— this one designed to deliver annihilating warheads capable of exterminating all life where the existence of even a single nuke remains unproven, but where suspicion now serves as a substitute for evidence. So now I will say what must be said. Why did I remain silent so long? Because I thought my origins, tarred by an ineradicable stain, forbade me to declare the truth to Israel, a country to which I will always remain attached. Why is it only now that I say, in my advancing age, and with my last drop of ink on the final page that Israel’s nuclear weapons endanger an already fragile world peace? Because tomorrow may be too late, and so the truth must be heard today. And because we Germans, already burdened by many weighty crimes, could become enablers of yet another, one easily foreseen, and thus no excuse could ever erase our complicity. Furthermore, I’ve broken my silence because I’m sick of the West’s hypocrisy and because I hope many others will free themselves from the shackles of silence, and speak out to renounce violence by insisting on permanent supervision of Israel’s and Iran’s atomic power by an international agency overseeing both governments. Only thus can we find the path to peace for Israelis, Palestinians and everyone else living in a region currently consumed by madness and ultimately, for ourselves.