We must not remain silent
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
2 of 3 free articles.
Editor,
Several years ago, I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washinton DC. Upon exiting the museum there was a poem on the wall that brought me to tears. I want to share that poem with you. But first let me tell you about the man who wrote that poem.
Martin Niemoller, the author of the poem was a Lutheran Pastor in Germany in the 1920s and 30s. He openly supported the Nazi party and sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radical right wing political movements. He welcomed Hitler’s accession to power in 1933.
He had been complicit through his silence with the early Nazi persecution and imprisonment of communists and political opponents of the regime. Only until Hitler began to interfere in the Protestant Church and its leadership, did he begin to speak out. By 1937 he was openly defying Hitler and the Nazi Regime.
He was imprisoned by the Nazi Régime in 1937 on charges of misusing the pulpit for political reasons and sent to a concentration camp where he remained until 1945.
Here is his poem:
FIRST THEY CAME
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.
We must not remain silent. We must speak out now before there is no one to speak out against the tyranny we are witnessing today.
Gerry Browning
Polson
