''No One Left To Speak for Me''
Commentary on the News
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." - Rev. Martin Niemöller, Germany, 1945
Martin Niemöller was a German pastor who famously penned those words after his release from the Dachau concentration camp at the close of World War Two.
A former U-Boat commander in World War One, Martin Neimoller became a pastor in Dahlem, a fashionable suburb of Berlin after the war.
Initially, Niemöller was a supporter of Adolf Hitler -- he even served as a poster boy for the Nazis in the early years by virtue of his military service.
Years later, as a protest against interference in church affairs by the National Socialists (Nazi Party), Niemöller founded the Pastors' Emergency League. The group, among its other activities, helped combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background.
For his efforts, Niemöller was eventually rounded up by personal order of the Fuhrer and sent to Saschenhausen and eventually Dachau. Hitler condemned Neimoller to spend the rest of his life in the Nazi concentration camp system as an inmate.
Niemöller’s quote instantly became famous and has been adopted and rewritten so many times to fit so many occasions since that it is actually impossible to find exactly what he really DID say.
The 'definitive' quote, if there is one, would be the one entered into the Congressional Record in October, 1968, in which Neimoller is quoted saying;
"When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and there was nobody left to be concerned."
No matter what version is quoted, Niemöller quote is remembered in some form because of its political truth, particularly in the intervening years since the Second World War.
A twenty-first century rendition of Niemöller's poem would read; "First they came for the unborn, and I was unconcerned because I had already been born." "Then they came for the deformed and defective and I was unconcerned because I was normal."
Then they came for the elderly and infirm and I was unconcerned because I was young and healthy.
"And so it goes until they come for me."
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Niemöller's poem is a word picture that describes incrementalism -- the process of gradually introducing concepts until they become like 'white noise' -- it is there and it is annoying, at first, but eventually, one becomes so used to it that it eventually fades into the background.
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