PEOPLE

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Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (1892 – 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor.

He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem "First they came ...".

The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads:

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.

Niemöller was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. He became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches.

He opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph, a clause in the statutes of an organisation, corporation, or real estate deed that reserved membership or right of residence solely for members of the "Aryan race" and excluded from such rights any non-Aryans, particularly those of Jewish and Slavic descent.

For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution.

After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt.

From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

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There are numerous versions of the ‘First they came’ work in circulation today, some of them set in stone, with varying claims of legitimacy.

For example, visitors to the New England Holocaust Memorial on Boston's Freedom Trail find this version, inscribed in 1995:

They came first for the Communists,

    But 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 trade unionists,

    and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

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 no one was left to speak up.

    

This version substitutes Communists for Socialists, moves Jews up before Trade Unionists, and adds Catholics as a persecuted group. Although various historical arguments can be made for the ordering of the groups, the selection of groups generally relates to the person or organization employing the quotation.