"First they came"

I visited the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston several years ago.  Two of our children went to school in Boston, and we walked to the Memorial during one of our many visits to the city.  The Memorial consists of six glass towers.  Visitors can walk beneath each tower and look up and all around, reading  quotes from survivors of each camp.  The walls on the outside of each tower display groups of numbers representing the more than 6 million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust.  There is also an engraving of the poem, "First They Came", by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller.  I've posted about the poem once in the past (see "A life of privilege - part I"), but I wanted to retell the story of the poem and its author today.

Niemöller was born in Lippstadt, Germany on January 14, 1892.  He was the son of a Lutheran priest, but he joined the German Navy in 1910 at the age of eighteen.  During World War I, he was assigned to a U-Boat and eventually rose to the rank of commander.  After the war, Niemöller decided to follow in his father's footsteps and started to train to become a priest.  

The Weimar Republic (officially known as the German Reich) was Germany's democratic government from 1918 to 1933, during which Germany was a constitutional republic for the first time in its history.  Weimar is the city which hosted the assembly that established the new German government following the end of World War I, which led to the unofficial name of the government.  Unfortunately, the Weimar Republic was unable to effectively deal with the severe economic and political problems Germany faced due to the harsh terms of surrender following World War I.  Niemöller had to take a part-time job working for the railroads in order to earn enough money to stay in school.  

Life for most Germans became even worse during the worldwide Great Depression, and as a result, support for radical groups like the Nazi Party ("Nazi" is the shortened name for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei , or National Socialist German Workers' Party)  increased.  Adolf Hitler, who led the Nazi Party, blamed the country's difficulties on Jews, foreigners, and the weakness of the Weimar government.  Niemöller was an early supporter of the Nazi party, and after being ordained as a priest in 1929, he became an ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler.  

Niemöller initially believed, like many others, that Hitler would provide the kind of leadership necessary to restore Germany to its previous greatness.  He also believed that the Nazi Party would return Germany to the Christian ideals and morals that had been abandoned after World War I.  He even referred to Hitler as an "instrument sent by god."  

Niemöller would become disillusioned with the Nazi Party when they started to control the German Protestant Church and changed the text of the Bible to remove what the Nazi's saw as "Jewish ideology."  Niemöller met with Hitler in January 1934, which opened his eyes to the true nature of the Nazi Party.  Initially, he would criticize the German government for interfering with religious matters, while ignoring the discriminatory laws forbidding Jewish people from marrying non-Jews and having jobs in government.  His own personal views were antisemitic at first.

Niemöller was arrested several times for opposing the Nazi Party, and he became increasingly critical of Hitler and the Nazis.  He was arrested and jailed without trial for 8 months in July 1937, and shortly after his release, he was arrested again and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.  He was transferred to Dachau concentration camp in 1941, where he would spend most of the remaining years of World War II.  He was transferred one last time to a concentration camp in Austria, which was liberated by U.S. forces in April 1945.

Just a few months after the war ended in October 1945, Niemöller headed a group of church leaders who admitted that they did not do enough to oppose the Nazi Party.  He would write in 1946, "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries...And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom.  For in our world and in our name have these things been done."

He would write and use the poem "First They Came" in several lectures beginning in 1947 and after.  His poem has inspired people across the world to speak up for others.  Personally, it's one of my favorite poems.  The message is important and just as timely today as it was when Niemöller first wrote it.  What I also find relevant is the fact that Niemöller led a somewhat controversial life, first supporting the Nazi Party and even its antisemitic views.  Apparently, he even volunteered to join the German Navy while imprisoned in concentration camp in 1938 and again in 1941.  His life story suggests to me that people can and do change.

Here is the text of the poem, once again:

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 the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me.