The Danger of Indifference: "First They Came For The Socialists": Pastor Niemoller, Nazi Prisoner [View all]

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- Pastor Martin Niemöller at his desk in his home. Berlin, Germany, ca. 1936.
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- The Quotation, Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:

First 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 for me.
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Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany. He emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last 7 years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He is perhaps best remembered for his postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out…”
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- US Holocaust Memorial Museum. 'First They Came For The Socialists.' - Ed.

Niemöller's famous words continue to be used today in popular culture and public discourse with changes reflecting particular issues. There are different versions of the quotation. These exist because Niemöller varied it in a number of different settings and in impromptu speeches. The quotation and its variants express Niemöller’s belief that Germans had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people. He felt this to be especially true of the leaders of the Protestant churches.

Martin Niemöller was born in the Westphalian town of Lippstadt, Germany, on Jan. 14, 1892. In 1910 he became a cadet in the Imperial German Navy. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Niemöller was assigned to a U-Boat, of which he was eventually appointed the commander. Under the stipulations of the armistice of November 11, 1918, that ended hostilities in World War I, Niemöller and other commanders were ordered to turn over their U-Boats to England. Along with many others, Niemöller refused to obey this order, and was, as a consequence, discharged from the Navy. In 1920, he decided to follow the path of his father and began seminary training at the University of Münster.

Niemöller enthusiastically welcomed the Third Reich. But a turning point in Niemöller's political sympathies came with a Jan. 1934 meeting of Adolf Hitler, Niemöller, & 2 prominent Protestant bishops to discuss state pressures on churches. At the meeting it became clear that Niemöller's phone had been tapped by the Gestapo (German Secret State Police). It was also clear that the Pastors Emergency League (PEL), which Niemöller had helped found, was under close state surveillance. Following the meeting, Niemöller would come to see the Nazi state as a dictatorship, one which he would oppose. The quotation stems from Niemöller's lectures during the early postwar period. Different versions of the quotation exist...

- More, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

- The Danger of Indifference: "Then They Came For Me." June 10, 2020.