"First They Came" by Martin Niemöller
I have to repost and resend this today. No American is safe -- not even Trump-MAGA supporters. The first people to cry when the s--t hits the fan will be those who voted for the felon.
Sunday’s Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden worsened my 3-day migraine. Though I turned it off after an hour and changed the focus of my Tuesday post, the residual of my migraine and Sunday afternoon’s broadcast of wickedness and hate woke me up Monday at 1 a.m. I wanted to cry, and I almost did when I hugged my daughter a few hours later after she got ready for school.
I was unable to fall back to sleep. Along with water and migraine medicine, I turned to beauty and wisdom as I unsuccessfully tried to fall back asleep. Though I knew screen time would not help me doze off, I rewatched Michelle Obama’s speech in Kalamazoo, Michigan before she introduced Vice President Kamala Harris to slough off the evil and darkness. I also reread Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came.”
As the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s, Rev. Martin Niemöller, a noted German Lutheran pastor and Christian theologian who believed in nationalist and far right politics, supported Hitler’s ideas. Though a man of God, Niemöller was also an anti-Semite.
But when Hitler took state control of German Protestant churches, Niemöller resisted the funny-looking totalitarian who could not get into art school and the Nazi’s Aryan Paragraph. Because of his opposition, Niemöller ended up imprisoned in Sachenhausen and Dachau concentration camps and was almost executed. After World War II, Niemöller rejected the anti-Semitism he once upheld and became an anti-war activist and pacifist.
The following poem arose from several speeches Niemöller made after the war. It remains relevant before next Tuesday’s Presidential election in the United States.
“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
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 out for me
I am familiar with the poem, but I didn’t know who had written it or anything about him.
My mother was a Holocaust denier of sorts—when pressed, she said she thought that something had happened but that it was highly exaggerated and that only about a million Jews were killed.
She picked Christmas Eve dinner to drop this information. I was at my parents’ house with some of my close friends.
I was so furious with her (she was playing poke the liberals, but was sincere in what she was saying.)
She asked me why I was so angry, and I remember saying to her that I would have been in the first group they came for, with my disability, when they were practicing on the elderly and disabled with various extermination methods.
I have no doubt that a second Trump administration would target the elderly and the disabled because they cost money.
Powerful, Laura. I hope you’re feeling a little better now too.