FROM WIKIPEDIA:
The best-known versions of the speech are the poems that began circulating by the 1950s.[1] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum quotes the following text as one of the many poeticversions of the speech:[2]
The best-known versions of the speech are the poems that began circulating by the 1950s.[1] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum quotes the following text as one of the many poeticversions of the speech:[2]
| “ |
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.
| ” |
Niemöller created multiple versions of the text during his career. The earliest speeches, written in 1946, list the communists, incurable patients, Jews or Jehovah's Witnesses, and civilians in countries occupied by Nazi Germany. In all versions, the impact is carefully built up, by going from the "smallest, most distant" group to the largest, Jewish, group, .... and then finally to himself as a by then outspoken critic of Nazism. Niemöller made the cardinal "who cares about them" clear in his speech for the Confessing Church in Frankfurt on 6 January 1946, of which this is a partial translation:[1]
