More chilling resonance with the present in Arthur Koestler’s memoir of early WWII, SCUM OF THE EARTH
This is from the end of a long section about his time in a hellish concentration camp for “undesirable aliens” that the (pre-Nazi and ostensibly democratic!) French government had set up:
honestly like, it's probably the correct thing to do but at the same time there are so many earnest and understandable philosophical reasons for people not to that it's basically pointless at this point to try and convince people who aren't already convinced
