First they came...

“First they came…” is a famous statement and provocative poem attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the sloth of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. There is some disagreement over the exact wording of the quotation and when it was created; the content of the quotation may have been presented differently by Niemöller on different occasions.

The text

According to the Martin-Niemöller-Foundation the text is as follows:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Another longer version is:^{[citation needed]}

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

In the United States, the quotation is more commonly known as:

First they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Yet another version is:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

(Wikiquote, see)

Author

Martin Niemöller was a German pastor and theologian born in Lippstadt, Germany, in 1892. Niemöller was an anti-communist and supported Hitler's rise to power at first. But when Hitler insisted on the supremacy of the state over religion, Niemöller became disillusioned. He became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler. In 1937 he was arrested and eventually confined in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. His crime was “not being enthusiastic enough about the Nazi movement”^{[citation needed]}. Niemöller was released in 1945 by the Allies. He continued his career in Germany as a clergyman and as a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II. His statement, sometimes presented as a poem, is well-known, frequently quoted, and is a popular model for describing the dangers of political apathy.

Origin

The statement was published in a 1955 book by Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, based on interviews he had conducted in Germany several years earlier. The quotation was circulated by civil rights activists and educators in the United States in the late 1950s. Some research traces the text to several speeches given by Niemöller in 1946.

Nonetheless, the wording remains controversial, both in terms of its provenance, and the substance and order of the groups that are mentioned in its many versions. While Niemöller's published 1946 speeches mention communists, the incurably ill, Jews or Jehovah's Witnesses (depending on which speech), and people in occupied countries, the 1955 text, a paraphrase by a German professor in an interview, lists communists, socialists, "the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on", and ends with "the Church". Based on the explanation given by Niemöller himself in 1976, this refers to the German Protestant ('Evangelische') Church, and not to the German Catholic Church. However, as claimed by Richard John Neuhaus in the November 2001 issue of his blog-like online journal 'First Things', when "asked in 1971 about the correct version of the quote, Niemöller said he was not quite sure when he had said the famous words but, if people insist upon citing them, he preferred a version that listed 'the Communists', 'the trade unionists', 'the Jews', and 'me'." However, historian Harold Marcuse could not verify that interview. Rather, he found a 1976 interview in which Niemöller referred to a 1974 discussion with the general bishop of the Lutheran Church of Slovakia. The 84-year-old Niemöller recalled in 1976:

There were no minutes or copy of what I said, and it may be that I formulated it differently. But the idea was anyhow: The communists, we still let that happen calmly; and the trade unions, we also let that happen; and we even let the Social Democrats happen. All of that was not our affair. The Church did not concern itself with politics at all at that time, and it shouldn't have anything to do with them either. In the Confessing Church we didn't want to represent any political resistance per se, but we wanted to determine for the Church that that was not right, and that it should not become right in the Church, that's why already in '33, when we created the minister emergency federation (Pfarrernotbund), we put as the 4th point in the founding charter: If an offensive is made against ministers and they are simply ousted as ministers, because they are of Jewish lineage (Judenstämmlinge) or something like that, then we can only say as a Church: No. And that was then the 4th point in the obligation, and that was probably the first anti-antisemitic pronouncement coming from the Protestant Church.

Usages

• At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the quotation is on display in a variation that substitutes "Socialists" for "Communists". The Holocaust Museum website has a discussion of the history of the quotation.
• A version of the statement is also on display at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, as well as the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia, and in The Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
• Jazz musician Charles Mingus recites a variation on the poem in the introduction to his composition "Don't Let it Happen Here".
• The punk rock band Anti-Flag recites an abridged version of the poem in the song Exodus/Emigre

See also

• Not My Business
• Anti-intellectualism
• The Hangman (poem)
• New England Holocaust Memorial
• Hundred Flowers Campaign
• Literary Inquisition
• Principiis obsta
• Then They Came for Me

Further reading

• Stein, Leo (2003. First published 1942), They Came for Niemoeller: The Nazi War Against Religion, Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Co, ISBN 1-58980-063-X, retrieved 22 August 2012  First published 1942 by Fleming H. Revell Co. 

• Angela Davis, “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.”

External links

• Niemöller's famous quotation as posted by Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"