Martin Niemöller: "First they came for the Socialists..."
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
First 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 for me.
The quotation stems from Niemöller's lectures during the early postwar period. Different versions of the quotation exist. These can be attributed to the fact that Niemöller spoke extemporaneously and in a number of settings. Much controversy surrounds the content of the poem as it has been printed in varying forms, referring to diverse groups such as Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Trade Unionists, or Communists depending upon the version. Nonetheless his point was that Germans—in particular, he believed, the leaders of the Protestant churches—had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.
"..Origin
The statement was published in a book by Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free (1955), 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..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak ... - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztky7r4Z_hE
https://salphotobiz.smugmug.com/People/Social-Justice-Helping-the/
https://goodnewseverybodycom.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/global-country-spotlight-europe-germany/
https://salphotobiz.smugmug.com/Other/Power-of-Words/
https://goodnewseverybodycom.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/now-you-know-impact-of-wwii-holocaust-history-and-present/
https://salphotobiz.smugmug.com/People/Stevens-County-Historical/i-hSGkkPC
