A timely quote for the present dates back to World War Two: “First they {Nazis} 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.” The “me” here is Martin Niemoller(1892—1984). This statement was in 1946.
Niemoller was an officer in the “Imperial Navy of the German Empire” during World War One. While I was in Gabon, Equatorial Africa,*a fascinating story was shared with me at Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s hospital in Lambarene. After World War One, Niemoller and Schweitzer were sharing stories. Niemoller told of his German warship preparing to sink another ship, but upon drawing closer, Niemolloer saw that it was a civilian passenger ship and ordered that it not be attacked. When he named the ship, Albert Schweitzer remarked with surprise: “I was a passenger on that ship.”
As we live in the first one hundred days of President Trump’s presidency, certainly many citizens are remembering Martin Niemoller’s statement “First they came for……..”
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*My research in Gabon resulted in my University of Wisconsin-Madison thesis: “The Mpongwe of the Gabon Estuary. A History to 1860.”
**Lutheran German Pastor Dietrich Bonhoffer’s resistance to German Nazis has many parallels to what Niemoller faced. Bonhoeffer was hanged after the Nazis alleged that he was part of a plot to assassinate Hitler.
Thanks to Wikipedia for some of the data used in the above op-ed.
