stonebear

‹‹Zuerst kamen sie wegen der Kommunisten.... ››

There's been a lot of mention of The Poem of late, and I thought I would dig into it. As I so often do, when digging into something, I discover a whole new level...

Martin Niemöller was a Lutheran pastor in Germany. Initially, being an anti-Communist, Niemöller supported Hitler, but when der Führer insisted on state supremacy over religion, he was like “Scheiß drauf” and became the leader of a group of German clergy opposed to the Reich. For this they eventually threw him in Dachau, which was liberated 29 April 1945.

The origins of The Poem weren't verse at all, nor in English; the ideas were part of a speech he gave in a church in Frankfurt in 1946, in German. When asked thirty years later about it, he said, “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 American verison of the poem mentions “socialists”, not “Communists”, because, well... The British version has both...

And I think that really highlights the good pastor's point: Even if we don't like somebody, if we sit by and allow injustice to exist, that gives the Overton window a shove towards injustice for ourselves.

So, I've posted what he actually said about it, the short form; if you want the poem, or the long form, or even more details, here's the Wikipedia article I got this from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

But I thought you should know.