…And Then They Came for Me.
As we progress toward elections here in the U.S., amidst much unrest, fear, and change, I am reminded forcefully of the words of one Pastor Martin Niemoller.
He was persecuted by the Nazis for his anti-Hitler stance when the crackdown on the churches began in 1934 Germany.
Arrested in 1937 for his outspoken beliefs and again soon after his release, he would finally be liberated from a concentration camp in 1945.
But it was after the war that Martin began to feel complicit due to his earlier anti-semitism and cooperation with the Nazi party.
We need to go back just a bit further to get a clearer picture of this man and to gain hope for our divided world today.
Before the Quote
Martin Niemoller was born in 1892 in Westphalia ( NW Germany) and actually served as a U-Boat Commander in WWI. Yes, “The War to End All Wars.” [1].
But as these things go, President Wilson’s dream of a League of Nations to end war never became reality. At least for the United States, who refused to join, due to the insistence of the other victorious powers to ‘make Germany pay’ for the war. Wilson wanted peace and fairness, and his famous Fourteen Points were rejected. Vengeance is never a good policy as the world would find out in ONE short generation.
And now, Pastor Niemoller went about his church duties and listened to the rhetoric of the day. The Communists were ruining the world…or was that the Jews? Or the Trade Union workers? Did it even matter? It didn’t to him, at least not yet.
The Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 by the Germans, who were left with little choice, had set the stage for what would become World War II…in just twenty years. Vengeance has a price. As does freedom.
When Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists (NAZI) took over the country in 1933, Martin Niemoller was a supporter. As were millions of Germans and many others around the world. The Nazis encouraged Germans everywhere to extol German values in their own countries. The German American Bund is a great example of this [2].
September 1, 1939, Germany invades Poland setting off a string of events that would see an estimated 85,000,000 human beings destroyed. And the number may be higher still [3].
But Niemoller had already seen the light.
Crackdown
In 1934, Adolf Hitler, as part of his plan to subject all Germany to direct Nazi rule, put a law into effect which brought the churches under the state. It was only then that Pastor Niemoller began to see. Only when persecution marched jack-booted down his cobbled street did he feel the reality millions of others already did.
He had a meeting in January of 1934 between himself, two bishops, and the Fuhrer. During the meeting, he found out that his phone had been tapped and his own Pastors Emergency League was being watched by the Gestapo [4]. It was this meeting that opened his eyes to the reality of the Third Reich.
What followed was his eventual speaking out against this interference by the state in the churches of his day. His zeal and rebellious speeches would land him in concentration camps twice for a total of about eight years. He would be liberated in 1945 by the Allies [5].
Hitler’s ‘Thousand Year Reich” had lasted a total of twelve years [6]
After the Fighting Stopped
In the early years after the war, Martin Niemoller expressed the guilt all Germans, he thought should feel, for the Holocaust which killed at least 18,683,900 living, breathing, souls. The number overwhelms our brains. We can’t understand numbers like that. They are too big to comprehend [7].
Jews: 6 million
Soviet civilians: around 7 million (including 1.3 Soviet Jewish civilians, who are included in the 6 million figure for Jews)
Soviet prisoners of war: around 3 million (including about 50,000 Jewish soldiers)
Non-Jewish Polish civilians: around 1.8 million (including between 50,000 and 100,000 members of the Polish elites)
Serb civilians (on the territory of Croatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina): 312,000
People with disabilities living in institutions: up to 250,000
Roma: up to 250,000
Jehovah’s Witnesses: around 1,900
Repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials: at least 70,000
German political opponents and resistance activists in Axis-occupied territory: undetermined
Homosexuals: hundreds, possibly thousands (possibly also counted in part under the 70,000 repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials noted above)
Where Do We Go Now?
So here we are in 2020, the year of the Coronavirus Pandemic. What do we make of all of the changes taking place in our world today?
The political upheaval; the continual destruction of our planet; race riots; the further erosion of the middle class; so many unemployed; and the bigotry and hatred everywhere we look…where does it end?
I think the answer lies in the last stanza of Martin Niemoller’s quote, “Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.” The answer lies with none other than me. None other than each one of us. One person making a difference each and every day by choosing the good and not the evil. By choosing to love and not to fear and hate. By choosing to educate ourselves and not just take the easy way out. The party line.
And by learning from our mistakes, and vowing to grow and be better. Each and every day. And if we can all do that one person at a time…well, how many of those 18 1/2 MILLION PEOPLE could have been saved if even every other person who lived then in Germany had done so? How many?
The choice is ours, and history is waiting to write down what we do…now…today.
[5] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/martin-niemoeller
[6] https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-thousand-year-reich-18143
[7] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust
