First They Came for the Jews
By Franklin H. Littell
Dr. Franklin H. Littell, a Methodist minister, college professor, Holocaust expert, scholar, and world citizen, is a frequent contributor to Christian Ethics Today.
Corrupted forms of the famous saying by Martin Niemoeller are being widely circulated. Why? And why are essentially new sayings invented and circulated, falsely claiming the authority of the famous Christian opponent of the Nazis?
First, who was Martin Niemoeller? Niemoeller was one of the most respected Protestant leaders in Germany. After a signal career as a young man, a decorated U-Boat captain in the First World War, he became an activated Christian. In 1933, when he became the most high profile of Hitler`s Christian opponents, he was in charge of a prestigious suburban parish in Berlin-Dahlem.
Niemoeller was a leader in the mobilization of the Pastors` Emergency League, in the Synod that denounced the abuses of the dictatorship in the famous "Six Articles of Barmen," and in other visible joint actions and sermons that finally led to his arrest on 1 July 1937. There were then a few honest judges still functioning in Germany, and when the court let him go with a slap on the wrist Hitler personally ordered his incarceration. Niemoeller was in concentration camp, including long periods of solitary confinement, until the end of the war.
After the war, active in international church affairs, he made preaching trips across the United States. At that time he brought the message of concern for others, often driving the point home with a confession of his own blindness when the Nazi regime rounded up the communists, socialists, trade unionists, and, finally, the Jews. The quotation is now famous, but often in corrupted form.
In a recent bulletin of the Social Studies School Service, a 23" by 161/2" poster is advertised for $4.95. It begins, "First they came for the Jews…." A beautiful new folder from Yad Vashem, featuring "The World Center for Teaching the SHOAH," has the Niemoeller statement on page 2 as the banner opening; it uses the same corrupted form. An educational video on skinheads and other racist extremists, produced by Jansen Associates, jumbles the sequence of Niemoeller`s warning and adds "then they came for the Roman Catholics, and I didn`t protest…." In other freely invented materials, we read "Then they came for the gays, and I didn`t protest…."
The latter corruption of the text was never seen by Niemoller: he died before homosexual exhibitionism became a public spectacle. But when we asked him years ago about the addition of the Roman Catholics, he said, "I never said it. They can take care of themselves." (Not particularly friendly, perhaps, remembered today in the modern climate of Catholic/Protestant rapprochement; but the report has the virtue of telling the truth.) When asked about the re-arranged order, "First they came for the Jews…," he simply laughed and passed it off.
There is a more than pedantic point to insisting that the Niemoeller quotation be truthfully used, if at all. Through the texts corrupted to promote special interests, literally millions of school children and also adults are being taught lies about the Holocaust. The damage is not as serious, perhaps, as the steady infiltration of "Holocaust revision" (i.e., denial). But it does help to create an atmosphere of playing fast and loose with the facts through intellectually dishonest and self-serving manipulation of the text.
Niemoeller knew the sequence of Nazi assault, because he was there. Any average student of the third Reich should be able to give the record accurately; it is a shocking display of professional incompetence when materials that are supposed to be vetted by specialists can be issued that are simply contrary to the record. Even if a corrupt text appears in print, whether published by an ignoramus or a special pleasure, the literate reader should catch the mistake.
As Martin Niemoeller gave the message, it was true to the facts. "They" didn`t "come for the Catholics" any more than "they" came for the Protestants. The true historical sequence, which Niemoeller of course followed, was communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Jews. The assault on the Jews was the culmination of the Nazi dictatorship`s ruthless elimination of targeted communities and individuals.
Martin Niemoeller`s message, in its true form, carries a powerful moral impact. Telling the story and drawing the lessees of the SHOAH are weakened, not strengthened, when carelessness or self-indulgence permits a corrupted text to be widely disseminated. The true sequence, which culminates the Nazi genocide of the Jews, is both literally and morally stronger than the corrupt forms that are becoming now widespread:
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.
