In making a point to a friend, I dusted off history (ok, my histories are not dusty, they are always used), and pulled out a poem. Reading it I couldnt help but see that if you changed a few of the words, it might apply to today. I quickly dashed off a version, though I will assume that a better one is possible with more careful selection.
First they came for the drug users,
and I didnt speak up,
because I wasnt a drug user.
Then they came for the fathers,
and I didnt speak up,
because I was a father and didnt believe.
Then they came for the oppressor class,
and I didnt speak up,
because I thought I wasnt on that side.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
The original was written by Rev. Martin Niemoller on what happened to him in Germany.
First they came for the Communists,
and I didnt speak up,
because I wasnt a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didnt speak up,
because I wasnt a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didnt speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945, version from TIME magazine
Rev. Martin Niemoller was protected until 1937 by both the foreign press and influential friends in the up-scale Berlin suburb where he preached. Eventually, he was arrested for treason. Perhaps due to foreign pressure, he was found guilty, but initially given only a suspended sentence. He was however then almost immediately re-arrested on Hitlers direct orders. From then on until the end of WW II, he was held at the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. Near the end of the war, he narrowly escaped execution. [from Charles Colsons Kingdoms in Conflict]
1 Response
I don’t know if Hitler ever ordered that Catholics be rounded up for extermination. Since he was an ally of Italy, that would have been politically foolish.
It’s possible that Niemoller is referring to Slavs or Eastern Europeans who were directly targeted for subjugation and elimination by Hitler unlike other areas, such as occupied France and Scandanavia where they enjoyed better treatment. The fact that Niemoller may have referred to Poles as Catholics indicate, ironically, an anti-Polish sentiment that exists in Germany to this day as well as Polish jokes in the states.
Many people are not aware that millions of Slavs were killed by Hitler perhaps because the first line of the poem, the communists, also were killing them. “Uncle Joe” Stalin, beloved by the left right up to the 1950’s, murdered over 80 million Slavic people’s. Didn’t hear much about that? Well of course not. Commies are the “Good guys”, the victims.
The communist agenda is quite simple: engage in class warfare. Bash one group and mass murder, er, “affirmative action” them while rewarding another. Then the recipients and turncoats (the capos) get all the goodies. Communists and Hitler had a lot in common and still do. It’s not any fundamentally different. Replace “Jew” for “white male” in Nazi and Democrat party literature respectively and there isn’t much difference.
Posted on February 28th, 2008 at 11:53 am
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