Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran minister, started off as a supporter of the Third Reich in the build up to Nazi Germany. It was easy. It was understandable. It was acceptable. Germany, and the rest of Europe, was emerging for the ravages of the Great War (later called First Word Wwar). They were difficult years, those, and the people were crying out for peace. Any kind of peace. The Bolsheviks (read socialist) and then later Jews became easy scapegoats. Antisemitism reached fever peak pitch in the mid thirties. When the Gestapo started night raids and banning of groups and individuals the people tacitly approved. Martin Niemöller was one of them.
Was he sailing too close to the wind? He would soon find out. By and by the regime started Nazification of the churches and Niemöller among other pastors protested but by then it was too little too late. For their effort
Himmler threw them into concentration camps among the same socialist, Jews and other minorities. He did seven years.
It is said that God works in mysterious ways. After the seven years and in an effort to pacify the guilt gnawing away at their souls, the pastors made this self-indicting
Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt:
“Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries. That which we often testified to in our communities, we express now in the name of the whole church: We did fight for long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the mentality that found its awful expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we accuse ourselves for not standing to our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously, and for not loving more ardently.”
But Niemöller is mostly remembered for this lamentation:
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.
What about you? Is there an ill you are condoning just because it is perpetrated on your perceived enemy? Do you approve of the regime subjugating other communities because they are not “your people”? It may appear right for the regime to bend the law slightly to suit a situation, your situation, but bit by bit of bending the law will eventually break. And once the law breaks you will not have a law to lean on when your turn to be down-pressed comes.
Take care of little injustices and the big injustices will take care of themselves
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