PASTOR MARTIN NIEMOLLER (JANUARY 14, 1892 TO MARCH 6, 1984)

              Thirty years ago on this date, March 6, 1984, one of my favorite Theologians, Pastor Martin Niemoller passed away in Wiesbaden. I will post information about him to remember him.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller

 

German stamp issued 1992 figuring Martin Niemöller, designed by Gerd Aretz.

Born	Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller 14 January 1892 Lippstadt, German Empire
Died	6 March 1984 (aged 92) Wiesbaden, West Germany
Church	Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union Confessional Church Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau Evangelical Church in Germany
Writings	First they came ...
Congregations served	St. Anne's in Dahlem, Germany
Offices held	President, Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau (1945–1961) President, World Council of Churches (1961–1968)
Title	Ordained Pastor

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.

Youth and World War I participation

Martin Niemöller was born in Lippstadt, then in the Prussian Province of Westphalia (now in North Rhine-Westphalia), on 14 January 1892 to the Lutheran pastor Heinrich Niemöller and his wife Pauline (née Müller), and grew up in a very conservative home. In 1900 the family moved to Elberfeld where he finished school, taking his abitur exam in 1910.

He began a career as an officer of the Imperial Navy of the German Empire, and in 1915 was assigned to U-boats. His first ship was the SMS Thüringen. In October of that year he joined the submarine mother ship SMS Vulkan, followed by training on the submarine SM U-3. In February 1916 he became second officer on SM U-73, which was assigned to the Mediterranean in April 1916. There the submarine fought on the Saloniki front, patrolled in the Strait of Otranto and from December 1916 onward planted mines in front of Port Said and was involved in commerce raiding. Flying a French flag as a ruse of war, the SM U-73 sailed past British warships and torpedoed two Allied troopships and a British man-of-war.

In January 1917 Niemöller was navigator of SM U-39. Later he returned to Kiel, and in August 1917 he became first officer on SM U-151, which attacked numerous ships at Gibraltar, in the Bay of Biscay, and other places. During this time the SM U-151 crew set a record by sinking 55,000 tons of Allied ships in 115 days at sea. In May 1918 he became commander of the SM UC-67. Under his command, SM UC-68 achieved a temporary closing of the French port of Marseilles by sinking ships in the area, by torpedoes, and by the laying of mines.

For his achievements, Niemöller was awarded the Iron Cross First Class. When the war drew to a close, he decided to become a preacher, a story he later recounted in his book Vom U-Boot zur Kanzel (From U-boat to Pulpit). At war's end, Niemöller resigned his commission, as he rejected the new democratic government of the German Empire that formed after the resignation of the German Emperor William II.

Martin Niemöller

Weimar Republic and education as pastor

On July 20, 1919 he married Else née Bremer (born July 20, 1890 – died August 7, 1961). The same year he began working at a farm in Wersen near Osnabrück but gave up becoming a farmer as he couldn't afford to buy his own farm. He subsequently pursued his earlier idea of becoming a Lutheran pastor, and studied Protestant theology at the Westphalian William's-University in Münster from 1919 to 1923. His motivation was his ambition to give a disordered society meaning and order through the Gospel and church bodies.

During the Ruhr Uprising in 1920 he was battalion commander of the "III. Bataillon der Akademischen Wehr Münster" belonging to the paramilitary Freikorps.

Niemöller was ordained on June 29, 1924. Subsequently, the united Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union appointed him curate of Münster's Church of the Redeemer. After serving as the superintendent of the Inner Mission in the old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of Westphalia, Niemöller in 1931 became pastor of the Jesus Christus Kirche (comprising a congregation together with St. Anne's Church) in Dahlem, an affluent suburb of Berlin.

Martin Niemöller

Role in Nazi Germany

Like most Protestant pastors, Niemöller was a national conservative, and openly supported the conservative opponents of the Weimar Republic. He even welcomed Hitler's accession to power in 1933, believing it would bring a national revival. However, he decidedly opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. In 1936, he signed the petition of a group of Protestant churchmen that sharply criticized Nazi policies and declared the Aryan Paragraph incompatible with the Christian virtue of charity.

The Nazi regime reacted with mass arrests and charges against almost 800 pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers. In 1933, Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund, an organization of pastors to "combat rising discrimination against Christians of Jewish background." By the autumn of 1934, Niemöller joined other Lutheran and Protestant churchmen such as Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in founding the Confessional Church, a Protestant group that opposed the Nazification of the German Protestant churches. The author and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann published Niemöller's sermons in the United States and praised his bravery.

However, Niemöller only gradually abandoned his national conservative views and even made pejorative remarks about Jews of faith while protecting—in his own church—baptised Christians, persecuted as Jews by the Nazis, due to their or their forefathers' Jewish descent. In one sermon in 1935, he remarked: "What is the reason for [their] obvious punishment, which has lasted for thousands of years? Dear brethren, the reason is easily given: the Jews brought the Christ of God to the cross!"

This has led to controversy about his attitude toward the Jews and to accusations of anti-Judaism. Holocaust scholar Robert Ashley Michael notes that Niemöller's statements were a result of traditional antisemitism and that Niemöller agreed with the Nazis' position on the "Jewish question" at that time. Werner Cohn, an American sociologist, who lived as a Jew in Nazi Germany, also reports on antisemitic statements by Niemöller.

Thus, Niemöller's ambivalent and often contradictory behaviour during the Nazi period makes him one of the most controversial enemies of the Nazis. Even his motives are disputed. The historian Raimund Lammersdorf considers Niemöller "an opportunist who had no quarrel with Hitler politically and only began to oppose the Nazis when Hitler threatened to attack the churches." Others have disputed this view and emphasize the risks that Niemöller took while opposing the Nazis. Nonetheless, Niemöller's behaviour contrasts sharply with the much more broad-minded attitudes of other Confessing Church activists such as Hermann Maas. The pastor and liberal politician Maas — unlike Niemöller — belonged to those who unequivocally opposed every form of antisemitism and was later accorded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Arrest and imprisonment

Arrested on 1 July 1937, Niemöller was brought to a "Special Court" on 2 March 1938 to be tried for activities against the State. He was fined 2,000 Reichmarks and received a prison term of seven months. As his detention period exceeded the jail term, he was released by the Court after the trial. However, immediately after leaving the Court, he was rearrested by Himmler's Gestapo—presumably because Rudolf Hess found the sentence too lenient and decided to take "merciless action" against him. He was interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945.

After his former cell-mate Leo Stein was released from Sachsenhausen to go to America, he wrote an article about Niemöller for The National Jewish Monthly in 1941. Stein reports that having asked Niemöller why he ever supported the Nazi Party, Niemöller replied:

I find myself wondering about that too. I wonder about it as much as I regret it. Still, it is true that Hitler betrayed me. I had an audience with him, as a representative of the Protestant Church, shortly before he became Chancellor, in 1932. Hitler promised me on his word of honor, to protect the Church, and not to issue any anti-Church laws. He also agreed not to allow pogroms against the Jews, assuring me as follows: "There will be restrictions against the Jews, but there will be no ghettos, no pogroms, in Germany."

I really believed, given the widespread anti-Semitism in Germany, at that time—that Jews should avoid aspiring to Government positions or seats in the Reichstag. There were many Jews, especially among the Zionists, who took a similar stand. Hitler's assurance satisfied me at the time. On the other hand, I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while.

I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me.

Martin-Niemoeller-House

Release and postwar activities

In late April 1945 Niemöller was transferred to Tyrol together with about 140 other prominent inmates, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army on May 5, 1945. According to Lammersdorf, there had been some attempts to whitewash his past, which were, however, soon followed by harsh criticism because of his role as a NSDAP supporter and his attitude toward the Jews. Niemöller himself never denied his own guilt in the time of the Nazi regime. In 1959, he was asked about his former attitude toward the Jews by Alfred Wiener, a Jewish researcher into racism and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. In a letter to Wiener, Niemöller stated that his eight-year imprisonment by the Nazis became the turning point in his life, after which he viewed things differently.

Niemöller was president of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau from 1947 to 1961. He was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, signed by leading figures in the German Protestant churches. The document acknowledged that the churches had not done enough to resist the Nazis.

Under the impact of a meeting with Otto Hahn (who has been called the "father of nuclear chemistry") in July 1954, Niemöller became an ardent pacifist and campaigner for nuclear disarmament. He was soon a leading figure in the post-war German peace movement and was even brought to court in 1959 because he had spoken about the military in a very unflattering way. His visit to North Vietnam's communist ruler Ho Chi Minh at the height of the Vietnam War caused an uproar. Niemöller also took active part in protests against the Vietnam War and the NATO Double-Track Decision.

In 1961, he became president of the World Council of Churches. He earned the Lenin Peace Prize in 1966.

He died at Wiesbaden in 1984.

Selected writings

• From U-boat to Pulpit, including an Appendix From Pulpit to Prison by Henry Smith Leiper (Chicago, New York: Willett, Clark, 1937).
• Here Stand I! with foreword by James Moffatt, translated by Jane Lymburn (Chicago, New York: Willett, Clark, 1937).
• The Gestapo Defied, Being the Last Twenty-eight Sermons by Martin Niemöller (London [etc.]: W. Hodge and Company, Limited, 1941).
• Of Guilt and Hope, translated by Renee Spodheim (New York: Philosophical Library, [1947]).
• “What is the Church?” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, vol. 40, no. 4 (1947): 10–16.
• “The Word of God is Not Bound,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, vol. 41, no. 1 (1947): 18–23.
• Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemöller’s Letters from Moabit Prison, translated by Ernst Kaemke, Kathy Elias, and Jacklyn Wilfred; edited by Hubert G. Locke (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., c1986).

Grave of Pastor Martin Niemöller in the Old Protestant Cemetery Wersen (Alter Evangelischer Friedhof Wersen) in Lotte-Wersen, Kreis Steinfurt, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

INTERNET SOURCE:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller

Quotes

• Our people are trying to break the bond set by God. That is human conceit rising against God. In this connection we must warn the Führer, that the adoration frequently bestowed on him is only due to God. Some years ago the Führer objected to having his picture placed on Protestant altars. Today his thoughts are used as a basis not only for political decisions but also for morality and law. He himself is surrounded with the dignity of a priest and even of an intermediary between God and man... We ask that liberty be given to our people to go their way in the future under the sign of the Cross of Christ, in order that our grandsons may not curse their elders on the ground that their elders left them a state on earth that closed to them the Kingdom of God.
• Statement on behalf of the Confessional Church, signed by nine other pastors, as quoted in TIME magazine (27 July 1936)

• The oppression is growing, and anyone who has had to submit to the Tempter's machine-gun fire during this last week thinks differently from what he did even three weeks ago.
• 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
• 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

• No honest man or woman in Germany feels responsible for these things. Good Germans took Nazism as a new religion. These people are shocked by the revelations which have shown that Nazism was not idealism, but a means to the performance of criminal acts...
  In war a German feels bound to join the ranks without question. Three of my sons were called up. I could not hold back. I wrote from the concentration camp to Admiral Raeder, C. in C. of the Navy, asking to be allowed to return to the submarine service or to do any other service in the Navy. I heard nothing for several months, and then a reply came, not from Raeder but from Keitel, head of the Wehrmacht. He thanked me, but regretted I could not be employed on active service.
• Replying to questions on the atrocities of the concentration camps, at a press conference in Naples, Italy, and confirming that he actually had written a widely publicized letter from such a camp, early in the war, to be permitted to serve in the military (5 June 1945).

• In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything--parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done.
• Sermons in Erlangen, Marburg, Göttingen and Frankfurt (January 1946), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 177.

• Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
  habe ich geschwiegen;
  ich war ja kein Kommunist.
  
  Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
  habe ich geschwiegen;
  ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
  
  Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
  habe ich nicht protestiert;
  ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
  
  Als sie die Juden holten,
  habe ich geschwiegen;
  ich war ja kein Jude.
  
  Als sie mich holten,
  gab es keinen mehr,
  der protestieren konnte.
• When the Nazis came for the communists,
  I remained silent;
  I was not a communist.
  
  When they locked up the social democrats,
  I remained silent;
  I was not a social democrat.
  
  When they came for the trade unionists,
  I did not speak out;
  I was not a trade unionist.
  
  When they came for the Jews,
  I remained silent;
  I wasn't a Jew.
  
  When they came for me,
  there was no one left to speak out.
• "First they came..." – The origins of this poem first have been traced to a speech given by Niemöller on January 6, 1946, to the representatives of the Confessing Church in Frankfurt. According to research by Harold Marcuse, the original groups mentioned in the speech were Communists, the incurably sick, Jews, and people in occupied countries. Since then, the contents have often been altered produce numerous variants. Niemöller himself came up with different versions, depending on the year. The most famous and well known alterations are perhaps those beginning "First they came for the Jews" of which this is one of the more commonly encountered:
• First they came for the Jews
  and I did not speak out
  because I was not a Jew.
  Then they came for the Communists
  and I did not speak out
  because I was not a Communist.
  Then they came for the trade unionists
  and I did not speak out
  because I was not a trade unionist.
  Then they came for me
  and there was no one left
  to speak out for me.
• Another variant extends the comparisons to incude Catholics and Protestants:
• In Germany they first came for the Communists,
  and 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.
• Other translations or variants:
• In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
  And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
  And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
  And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
• Twenty-five years later Niemöller indicated that this was the version he preferred, in a 1971 interview.
• When the Nazis came for the communists,
  I did not speak out;
  As I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I did not speak out;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

• When the Nazis arrested the Communists,
  I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist.
  When they locked up the Social Democrats,
  I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat.
  When they arrested the trade unionists,
  I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist.
  When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.
• First the Nazis came…
  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.

• The renunciation of war as expressed in the Japanese Constitution has given a first ray of hope to a world in darkness and despair, and men today cling to this hope passionately. Can we really do something about it or are we to stand aside as idle onlookers, unable to contribute for better or for worse?
• Statement for a Japanese publication (February 1954), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 214

• 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.
• Letter to a Dr. Weiner (1956), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 334

• We had been frightened of atomic weapons since 1945. In those days I became convinced — and remain convinced now — that, after Hitler, Truman was the greatest murderer in the world.
• On his movement toward pacifism and becoming an activist against nuclear weaponry, as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 213

• For politicians truth and falsehood are unimportant. So I never could become a politician — not even a church politician.
• As quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 223

• I began my political responsibility as an ultra-conservative. I wanted the Kaiser to come back; and now I am a revolutionary. I really mean that. If I live to be a hundred I shall maybe be an anarchist, for an anarchist wants to do without all government.
• As quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 223

• One thing is clear, the president of North Vietnam is not a fanatic. He is a very strong and determined man, but capable of listening, something that is very rare in a person of his position.
• On Ho Chi Minh. as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 225

• I am now convinced that the Reformation of the church will come from the east. In the west there is no spiritual life. (I'm speaking of the Protestant church and not the Roman Catholic church.) We have civilisation and we try to keep up culture, but we have no spiritual life. The east has a spiritual life. They know that colour influences the spirit more than black lines. In Russia there is still the notion that art is nearer religion than thinking in lines and logic. All abstract rationalising needs to be filled out with sensual thinking and feelings. In Russia there is still a strong impression of colour.
• Statement on his admiration of the Eastern Orthodox traditions (1982), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 207

Quotes about Niemöller

• You suppose that Christianity is oppressed in Germany and that there is a rule by force and secret trial. Though this is not the case, the German State cannot be expected to tolerate incessant attacks, open or veiled, by ministers of the Christian faith upon its very foundations. There are recalcitrant pastors who seem to be unaware of the fact that they would have been shot, hanged or burned long ago if it had not been for the gigantic and successful struggle of Adolf Hitler to safeguard civilization in this country against the horrors of Communism. Therefore by attacking National Socialism, they are striking at themselves.
• Dr. Reinhard Becker, in a letter to Niemöller (November 1937), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 135

• He called on the people to show a sense of responsibility towards their fellow-men, he abjured them not to forget the lessons of the past and, above all, he reminded them constantly of the burden of guilt which had to be redeemed before a new life could begin. In so doing he was at pains not to exclude himself from a like responsibility, and told in this connexion the story of the visit which he and his wife paid to Dachau in the autumn of 1945. "After showing her the cell in which he had been confined for so many months, they passed the crematorium. A great white-painted board had been affixed to a tree and on it, in black letters, they read: "Here between the years 1933 and 1945 238,756 human beings were incinerated."
  At that moment, Niemoller told his audience, the consciousness of his own guilt and his own failure assailed him as never before. "And God asked me — as once He asked the First Man after the Fall, Adam — Man, where wast thou in those years 1933 to 1945? I knew I had no answer to that question. True, I had an alibi in my pocket, for the years 1937 to 1945, my identity disc from the concentration camp. But what help to me was that? God was not asking me where I had been from 1937 to 1945, but from 1933 to 1945, and for the years 1933 to 1937 I had no answer. Should I have said perhaps: 'As a pastor in those years I bore courageous witness to the Faith; I dared to speak, and risked life and freedom in doing so?' But God did not ask about that. God asked: 'Where were you from 1933 to 1945 when human beings were incinerated here? When, in 1933, Goering publicly boasted that all active Communists had been imprisoned and rendered harmless — that was when we forgot our responsibility, that was when we should have warned our parishioners. Many a man from my own parish, who went and joined the National Socialist Party and who is now to do penance for his act, could rise up against me today and say that he would have acted differently if I had not kept silence at that time. ... I know that I made my contribution towards the enslavement of the German people.
• Dietmar Schmidt, in Pastor Niemöller (1959) 


• The Reverend Martin Niemoeller had personally welcomed the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933. In that year his autobiography, From U-boat to Pulpit, had been published. The story of how this submarine commander in the First World War had become a prominent Protestant pastor was singled out for special praise in the Nazi press and became a best seller. To Pastor Niemoeller, as to many a Protestant clergyman, the fourteen years of the Republic had been, as he said, "years of darkness" and at the close of his autobiography he added a note of satisfaction that the Nazi revolution had finally triumphed and that it had brought about the "national revival" for which he himself had fought so long — for a time in the free corps, from which so many Nazi leaders had come.
  He was soon to experience a terrible disillusionment. ... By the beginning of 1934, the disillusioned Pastor Niemoeller had become the guiding spirit of the minority resistance in both the "Confessional Church" and the Pastor's Emergency League.
• William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of he Third Reich (1964), p. 233

• Niemöller had once again delivered a rebellious sermon in Dahlem; at the same time transcripts of his tapped telephone conversations were presented to Hitler. In a bellow, Hitler ordered Niemöller to be put in a concentration camp and, since he had proven himself to be incorrigible, kept there for life.
• Albert Speer, on Hitler's decision to arrest Niemöller, in Inside the Third Reich: The Memoirs of Albert Speer (1970), p. 98

 

PHOTO SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/255868

VIDEO SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ-DSBnCHbI

Why Martin Niemoller Prayed for His Nazi Captors

Uploaded on Jul 19, 2011

Martin Niemoller was an anti-Nazi theologian who was put into concentration camps for his views. His position towards his captors is an example for all of us who struggle with enemies in our lives.