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 Niemöller was (1892–1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite, he came to oppose the Nazi regime during the late 1930s.
He was arrested and sent to “protective custody” in a concentration camp for his and his church’s opposition to state involvement in Church – he nearly escaped death.
After World War Two, he traveled and spoke condemning Nazism and helping to educate people about the importance of human rights. In 1946 he published “First They Came,” a poetic form of a postwar confessional speech he gave in January 1946.
Photo: German police stop and search a man in Berlin as members of the Nazi SA stand nearby, Berlin, Germany, 1933.
Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.
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