Feb. 28, 2013: Conference paper by Matthew Hockenos, Skidmore College, "Martin Niemöller in America, 1946-1947: ‘A Hero with Limitations’" in: ACCH Quarterly 18:2 (June 2012).. The poem speaks on the cowardice of certain segments of the German population as the Nazis decimated their own country. On Ho Chi Minh. Martin Niemöller was arrested on 1 July 1937 and on 2 March 1938 tried for “activities against the state”. Martin Niemöller is, probably, the most emblematic figure of the German underground to the Third Reich. Nonetheless, Martin Niemöller was one of the earliest Germans to talk publicly about broader complicity in the Holocaust and guilt for what had happened to the Jews. Martin Niemoeller was a Protestant pastor born January 14, 1892, in Lippstadt, Westphalia. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. This short piece, ‘First They Came’, is what is known as a prose-poem.Within it, the speaker alludes to the themes of guilt, persecution, and responsibility. Martin Niemeoller was a leading Protestant pastor who was an outspoken critic of the Nazi Party and all it stood for. Only in 1963, in a West German television interview, did Niemöller acknowledge and make a statement of regret about his own antisemitism (see Gerlach, 2000, p. 47). Martin Niemöller was not arrested until 1937 because he was originally a member of the Nazi party and a war hero. In 1934, he started the Pastors’ Emergency League to defend the church. He was born in Lippstadt, Westphalia, on January 14th, 1892. He was sentenced to seven months in prison. Martin Niemeoller lived a dangerous life and in many senses he was lucky to survive World War Two as many others were executed for much lesser charges. 7 BURN 1: being heard FIRST THEY CAME By Martin Niemöller First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists He is a very strong and determined man, but capable of listening, something that is very rare in a person of his position. Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Lutheran pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. A chief reason that the U.S. War Department immediately after World War II granted accreditation to a special correspondent for religious affairs was the desire to find and support the Christian leaders who had resisted Hitler and survived. He had been a U-boat captain in WW I, prior to becoming a pastor; he had supported Hitler prior to the time that Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The finding and freeing of Martin Niemöller at the end of the war. Niemeoller was born in … The Rev. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. It was part of a post-war confession made in German by the German Lutheran paster Martin Neimöller. He was a submarine commander in World War I. He was born in Lippstadt, Westphalia, on January 14th, 1892. In 1936 Niemöller signed a petition along with a group of Protestant churchmen, an action that prompted the mass arrest of nearly 800 men by the Nazis. Old News/Site History (back to top). He was anti-communist and initially supported the Nazis until the church was made subordinate to state authority.. 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. 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