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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.
—Pastor Martin Niemöller, 1945
Martin Niemöller (pronounced Nee-mū-ler),
born in 1892, served in the German navy as a U-boat commander during World War
I. He was ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 1924 and showed early enthusiasm for
Adolf Hitler’s ideas for the rebuilding of the German nation. However, once Hitler
came to power in 1933, Niemöller quickly became a critic of the Nazi leader’s
militant and anti-Semitic actions and his attacks on the Protestant churches in
Germany.
Niemöller, along with other like-minded
religious leaders—most famously Dietrich Bonhoeffer—formed a resistance
movement called the Confessional
Church. These leaders
preached against Hitler and Nazism in the mid and late 1930s as WWII loomed.
Hitler, seeking to silence any opposition, ordered the leaders of the Confessional Church arrested and sent to
concentration camps. Niemöller was arrested in 1937 by Nazi authorities and
sent first to Sachsenhausen and then to Dachau
concentration camp. He stayed imprisoned until he was liberated by the Allies
in the spring of 1945.
1.
Who are “they” that Niemöller writes
about, as in, “first they came for…”?
2.
What does it mean when he says, “came
for”? What do you think happens to the people that "they" come for in the poem?
3.
What other groups did the Nazis “come
for” before and during WWII?
4.
What does he mean by, “I didn’t speak
up”?
5.
Why do you think Reverand Niemöller did not speak out to protect the people in
the poem?
6.
What do you think Niemöller’s purpose was for writing and speaking these lines
throughout his life after the war?
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