"In the dire months since Donald Trump's return to power, you've no doubt read a version of the famous mea culpa "First They Came"-perhaps woven into the lines of an essay or op-ed, perhaps thumbed out on social media. Part warning, part exhortation, the short text (it's often mistaken for a poem) comes to us as tragically earned wisdom from the rise of the Nazis, alas grimly relevant to the America of today."
"In the decades since these words were formulated, they've gradually eclipsed the man responsible for them, blocking his presence so thoroughly that they arrive on a page, in some instances, without so much as an attribution. But even on those occasions when Martin Niemöller does get his due, he tends to be credited only vaguely, as a German pastor who ran afoul of Hitler-his story shorn of its most arduous complexities."
"Niemöller was indeed a German cleric, a man world-famous in his day as a defiant martyr for freedom of religion, imprisoned by the Führer for eight long years, until the very end of World War II. In the years after his release, Niemöller began offering piecemeal the lines of what would become his famed text, asserting them in remarks during sermons and speeches in the bombed-out ruins of the Third Reich."
In the months following Donald Trump's return to power, a widely circulated version of 'First They Came' has resurfaced as a warning and exhortation. The most authoritative variant lists Communists, trade unionists, Jews, and ultimately the speaker as victims of silence. The lines have eclipsed Martin Niemöller, often arriving unattributed or with a simplified biography. Niemöller was a German cleric imprisoned by the Führer for eight years and later offered piecemeal versions of the lines in sermons amid the ruins of the Third Reich. Versions vary in named groups, but the core theme of the cost of indifference remains.
Read at The Nation
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