First They Came...

 Image from Wikimedia Commons

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?

Adapted from: 

http://www.nationalww2museum.org/education/for-teachers/lesson-plans/personal-responsibility.pdf

Another Link: http://bettysenglish2.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/first-they-came.html