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SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/255868
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QUOTE: We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the
arm of authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep
silent at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must
remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man. [Last sermon before being imprisoned by the
Nazi regime of Germany (27 June 1937), as quoted in Religion in the Reich
(1939) by Michael Power, p. 142]
AUTHOR: Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller
(German: [ˈniːmœlɐ]; 14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was
a German anti-Nazi theologian and
Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his statement "First they came ...".
Although he was a
national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, he became one
of the founders of the Confessional Church, which opposed the nazification of
German Protestant churches. He vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph,
but made remarks about Jews that some scholars have called antisemitic. For his
opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was
imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945.
He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment. After his
imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help
the 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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