Posted 05 January 2025 - 09:34 PM
As a goodbye from me to the Personal section. A piece copied from the excellent Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
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
Martin Niem?ller
Martin Niem?ller was born in Lippstadt, in the west of Germany, on 14 January 1892. He was the son of a priest, and in 1910 he joined the German Navy. During World War One he was assigned to a U-Boat, a German submarine, and eventually became its commander.
Niem?ller followed in his father?s footsteps and started training to be a priest in 1920. The 1920s were a difficult time for many in Germany, and Niem?ller took a part-time job laying railway tracks to earn money while studying. Many people, including Niem?ller, believed that the new German government, the Weimar Republic, was unable to deal with the continuing economic and political problems Germany faced. Support for radical political groups like the Nazis grew. Life worsened for most Germans when the Great Depression, a worldwide economic crisis, started in 1929, with businesses closing and many people losing their jobs.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, the Nazi party under Adolf Hitler became increasingly popular. They blamed the country?s difficulties on Jews, foreigners, and the weakness of the Weimar government, and promised they would improve ordinary people?s lives. Niem?ller was one of the Nazi party?s early supporters. After being ordained in 1929, he remained a strong supporter of Hitler, despite the party?s hatred of, and discrimination against, Jewish people and other groups.
Like many Germans at the time, Niem?ller believed that the Nazis and Hitler would provide strong leadership to make Germany a powerful and respected nation again. He also saw the Nazi party as a way for Germany to return to the Christian morals he thought had been abandoned, even referring to Hitler as an ?instrument sent by god?. Niem?ller?s eventual split with the Nazi party came when they started to control the German Protestant Church. They appointed an official leader of the Church and changed the text of the Bible to remove what the Nazis saw as ?Jewish ideology?.
After meeting with Adolf Hitler in January 1934, Niem?ller started to see the Nazi state as a dictatorship. Even then, although Niem?ller criticised the German government for interference in religious matters, he did not criticise the discriminatory laws forbidding Jewish people from marrying non-Jews, and preventing Jews from having jobs in government. Niem?ller himself held antisemitic views; in the 1920s and 1930s he referred to Jews as a ?despised people? and ?Christ killers?. The only arguments he made were that Jews should be allowed to remain members of the church once they converted to Christianity, and that the German government should not interfere with the way churches were run.
Niem?ller?s opposition to the Nazi regime?s rules for churches saw him arrested several times, as he became increasingly critical of the Nazis and Hitler. In July 1937 he was arrested again, held for eight months without trial, and re-arrested immediately after his release by the Gestapo, Germany?s secret police. He was then sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. At this point, these camps held political prisoners, in addition to those perceived as ?threats to society? such as Jewish people, gay men, Roma and Sinti people, and ?asocials? including alcoholics and beggars. In 1941, Niemoller was transferred to Dachau concentration camp, where he would spend most of the rest of the war. Finally, in 1945 he was transferred to another camp in Austria, where he was liberated by American troops in April 1945.
After World War Two, Niem?ller repeatedly expressed regret at his previous support for the Nazi party, and his failure to oppose it more broadly. In 1945 he admitted he ?never quarrelled with Hitler over political matters, but purely on religious grounds?. However, it is notable that the first public record of Niem?ller apologising for his own antisemitic words and views was not until 1963 in a radio interview.
In October of 1945, just a few months after the war ended, Niem?ller headed a group of German churches who admitted they did not do enough to oppose the Nazi regime. Niem?ller was one of very few Germans who called on their fellow citizens to accept their responsibility for Nazi atrocities too, saying in a sermon 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.?
The poem for which he has become most well-known, First They Came, was also written in this post-war period. Niem?ller gave many lectures on a world tour in 1947, which included his poem, leading to several slightly different versions. He was one of the few to speak out quickly, and say that the German people should accept responsibility for the murders of six million Jewish people during the Holocaust. This opinion was often not well received in Germany at the time.
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The Earl of Chesterfield, on 03 January 2025 - 06:00 PM, said:
