Martin Niemoller Quotes


I have never concealed the fact and said it before the court in 1938 that I came from an anti-Semitic past and tradition... I ask only that you look at my life historically and take it as history. I believe that from 1933 I truly represented the Lutheran-Christian outlook on the Jewish question - as I revealed before the court - but that I returned home after eight years' imprisonment as a completely different person.


Citations

Gerlach, Wolfgang. And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews. Translated by Victoria J. Barnett, University of Nebraska Press, 2000, p. 248.

Related Quotes

Martin Niemoller
Martin Niemoller
  • Born: January 14, 1892
  • Died: March 6, 1984
  • Nationality: German
  • Profession: Clergyman

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller 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.”