DIANE RUFINO: And when they came for me there was no one left to speak out.

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.

The reason it will touch you is because these short five sentences explain how a people could so effectively detach themselves from the policies of their government so that it could ultimately imprison all political enemies and slaughter six million innocent people.

Martin Niemoller was a Protestant (Lutheran) pastor who founded the anti-Nazi Confessing Church in 1934. In November 1945, he visited the Dachau concentration camp, where he was imprisoned from 1941 until it was liberated in 1945, and it was this particular visit which is believed to have inspired him to write his now-famous quote.

In 1931, Martin Niemoller became a Lutheran pastor in a wealthy suburb of Berlin. Initially, he supported Hitler and most of his policies. But then the Fuhrer began to interfere in church affairs. One of the first laws that Hitler put into effect in Germany was known as the "Aryan Paragraph." This new rule stated that only Aryans could have positions in the German government; Jews were no longer allowed to have government jobs. The rule was quickly expanded to ban Jews from becoming Pastors in any of the Christian churches in Germany. Meanwhile, in 1934, Niemoller and several other 'rebel' pastors established the Confessing Church, a branch of the German Protestant (Lutheran) Church, to resist the German Christians' Faith Movement (the Reich Church). One of the major distinguishing policies of the Confessional Church was that Jews who had converted to Christianity could become pastors. The Aryan law, as it applied to the catholic church, was a sore spot for Pastor Niemoller. He argued that once Jews had converted to Christianity they should be allowed to remain in the Church.

In June 1936, Niemoller and nine other leaders of the Confessing Church signed and sent a memorandum to the Fuhrer. Among other complaints, it specifically attacked the Nazi party's attempts to force anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews on Christians in violation of the commandment to "Love they neighbor as thyself" and it chastised the party for presenting Christian parents with the dilemma of forcing their children to adopt such non-Christian policies. Six of these leaders were arrested and thrown into prison or concentration camps, and one died under "suspicious circumstances." Niemoller himself was arrested in 1937, for delivering outspoken sermons. He was arrested later than the others because he was a member of the Nazi Party and had been a war hero; he commanded a sub in WWI and successfully torpedoed and sunk a British vessel. He was held for eight months at Moabit prison without a trial and when his case was finally heard, he was found guilty of "abusing the pulpit" and treason. At that point he was only fined. But as he left the courthouse, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp to be "re-educated." Niemoller refused to change his views, even after a personal plea from Hitler himself, and in 1941, he was transferred to the infamous Dachau camp, where he stayed until the end of the war. Joseph Goebbels urged Hitler to have him executed, but he was released on April 24th, a few days before the camp was liberated by the Americans on April 29, 1945.

[Dachau was one of the three concentration camps in Germany (Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald); It opened on March 22, 1933, less than two months after Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, and the first prisoners were Communists, just as Niemoller said. The Socialists, mentioned in Niemoller's quote were officially known as the Social Democrats. They posed the greatest political risk to Hitler and the Nazi party so that's why they were rounded up. In fact, all three camps three were located in areas of Germany considered to be hotbeds of Communist and Social Democrat political activity].


Unfortunately, while Niemoller stood up for converted Jews, he otherwise appears to have harbored anti-Semite feelings and openly professed his belief that the Jews had been punished through the ages because they had "brought the Christ of God to the cross." He delivered a sermon which included, in part: "I cannot help saying quite harshly and bluntly that the Jewish people came to grief and disgrace because of their own actions. The Jewish people bear a curse throughout the history of the world because they were ready to approve of their Messiah just as long and as far as they thought they could gain some advantage for their own plans from Him, His words, and His deeds. They bear a curse, because they rejected Him and resisted Him to the death." Sadly, his very words would support the teachings of the Reich Church.

For those who have not yet visited the Holocaust Museum, there is one section dedicated to how hatred for the Jews escalated in Nazi Germany. It followed a carefully-designed plan of propaganda, of course, first outlined by Hitler in the book he wrote while imprisoned - Mein Kampf - and then implemented by Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the key Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing the implementation of the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder and dispose of the Jews of Europe. Before the Nazis labeled Jews as " Judenrat" and forced them to wear yellow ribbons, destroyed their businesses and synagogues during the "Night of Broken Glass" (or Kristallnacht; when the SS destroyed over 7,000 Jewish businesses and over 1,000 synagogues), seized their property, took away their rights, and rounded them up for deportation to concentration camps, there were more insidious strategies to turn the German people against the Jews. For one, Jews were blamed for controlling much of the country's banks and finances during World War I and not freeing money up to support the German troops. Jews were accused of stabbed their fellow countrymen in the back. Germany had been forced to ask for an Armistice in World War I because it could no longer finance the war and because the trade unions called for a general strike of all the workers so that the whole country of Germany came to a total stop. Germany lost World War I, even though the country was never invaded and its army was not defeated in the field. Another propaganda campaign was to have German churches teach that Jews were evil and enemies of Christians because they killed Jesus. Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Church in Germany, professed this view back in the 1540s so hostility to the Jews was nothing new in Europe. He even suggested at the time that all Jews be removed from Germany. Luther wrote a book entitled On the Jews and Their Lies, and just about every church and every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from this book.

I didn't write this article to offer praise to Niemoller for his famous quote or to extol any of his virtues. The truth is that his actions during the rise of Nazi Germany and the ensuing genocide were really only to sustain the church and nothing more. He was essentially concerned only when church members were arrested and many were. He did not seem overly concerned with what was happening to the Jewish population or willing to accept any responsibility as a church leader to stand up for the inhumanity that was going on in ghettos, camps, and ovens. I simply want to find the lesson in his story. And I know there has to be a lesson because his quote is so eloquent and so astute.

When he visited Dachau in 1945 after he had been released, something about the trip caused him to reflect and appreciate what had happened in Germany. Did he have a change of heart about what happened to the Jews and about his anti-semitic sermons? Perhaps not. Was he affected by the suffering and oppression around him while at Dachau? Probably not. He and other pastors were separated into different facilities and given favorable treatment there. Did he finally appreciate the enormity of the Nazi's persecution of the Jews? Perhaps.

I think the lesson Niemoller finally learned and what he tried to sum up so he could teach us is that innocent people were sent to concentration camps by the Nazis for no reason at all, and because good people did nothing, the result was that in a good person (Niemoller himself) was wrongly imprisoned. Martin Niemoller was a German citizen, a member of the Nazi party, and a Protestant minister in a country that was predominantly Protestant and controlled by the Nazi party. He merely disagreed with his Fuhrer on one simple issue.


What this lesson says to me is that we need to stand up for all attacks on liberty with equal passion, even if they might not affect us personally. For those who need healthcare, maybe the fight against socialized healthcare is not your issue. But the underlying freedom that is eroded because of such a government program should be an issue worth your attention. Only you can do the balancing test - between getting a break on healthcare because the government is providing it AND the natural right to decide matters of healthcare on your own and without the government mandating coverage and solutions. For those who don't agree with the message of Occupy Wall Street, remember that the underlying freedom to protest and disrupt government is one that is vital to us all as Americans and might become even more vital in the months ahead. We all want to feel safe against terrorists who want to do us harm and we believe the government owes us that protection, yet a law that ultimately allows our very government to spy on its citizens and detain us indefinitely for suspicious activity is one that gives an already dubious and untrustworthy government the power to decide what the "suspicious activity" is and who the suspects might be. We have the natural right to be free from harassment from our government.

God who gave us life gave us liberty. We need to value our liberties just as we value our lives.

Let's learn the lesson embraced in Niemoller's quote. Let's take it to heart. If we can truly appreciate that valuable lesson then maybe the horror of the concentration camps wasn't in complete vain.

References:
Harold Marcuse, " Martin Niemöller's Famous Quotation," Sept. 12, 2011. Referenced at: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/niem.htm

Martin Niemoller, " Exile in the Fatherland: Martin Niemöller's Letters from Moabit Prison," (Memoir), 1975.

"Rev. Martin Niemoller: First they came for the Communists….," Scrapbookers blog, Aug. 19, 2010. Referenced at: http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/rev-martin-niemoller-first-they-came-for-the-communists/

http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-NEWS-and-COMMENTARY-c-2012-01-04-257957.112112-And-when-they-came-for-me-there-was-no-one-left-to-speak-out.html

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MUSLIMS & JEWS

Some very interesting facts!

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:

1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:

1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat

1990 - Elias James Corey

1994 - Yaser Arafat: ?????

1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:

(zero)

Physics:

(zero)

Medicine:

1960 - Peter Brian Medawar

1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 SEVEN

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population.

They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:

1910 - Paul Heyse

1927 - Henri Bergson

1958 - Boris Pasternak

1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon

1966 - Nelly Sachs

1976 - Saul Bellow

1978 - Isaac Bashevis Si nger

1981 - Elias Canetti

1987 - Joseph Brodsky

1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:

1911 - Alfred Fried

1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser

1968 - Rene Cassin

1973 - Henry Kissinger

1978 - Menachem Begin

1986 - Elie Wiesel

1994 - Shimon Peres

1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:

1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer

1906 - Henri Moissan

1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson

1908 - Gabriel Lippmann

1910 - Otto Wallach

1915 - Richard Willstaetter

1918 - Fritz Haber

1921 - Albert Einstein

1922 - Niels Bohr

1925 - James Franck

1925 - Gustav Hertz

1943 - Gustav Stern

1943 - George Charles de Hevesy

1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi

1952 - Felix Bloch

1954 - Max Born

1958 - Igor Tamm

1959 - Emilio Segre

1960 - Donald A. Glaser

1961 - Robert Hofstadter

1961 - Melvin Calvin

1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau

1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz

1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman

1965 - Julian Schwinger

1969 - Murray Gell-Mann

1971 - Dennis Gabor

1972 - William Howard Stein

1973 - Brian David Josephson

1975 - Ben jamin Mottleson

1976 - Burton Richter

1977 - Ilya Prigogine

1978 - Arno Allan Penzias

1978 - Peter L Kapitza

1979 - Stephen Weinberg

1979 - Sheldon Glashow

1979 - Herbert Charles Brown

1980 - Paul Berg

1980 - Walter Gilbert

1981 - Roald Hoffmann

1982 - Aaron Klug

1985 - Albert A. Hauptman

1985 - Jerome Karle

1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach

1988 - Robert Huber

1988 - Leon Lederman

1988 - Melvin Schwartz

1988 - Jack Steinberger

1989 - Si dney Altman

1990 - Jerome Friedman

1992 - Rudolph Marc us

1995 - Martin Perl

2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:

1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson

1971 - Si mon Kuznets

1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow

1975 - Leonid Kantorovich

1976 - Milton Friedman

1978 - Herbert A. Si mon

1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein

1985 - Franco Modigliani

1987 - Robert M. Solow

1990 - Harry Mark owitz

1990 - Merton Miller

1992 - Gary Becker

1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:

1908 - Elie Metchnikoff

1908 - Paul Erlich

1914 - Robert Barany

1922 - Otto Meyerhof

1930 - Karl Landsteiner

1931 - Otto Warburg

1936 - Otto Loewi

1944 - Joseph Erlanger

1944 - Herb ert Spencer Gasser

1945 - Ernst Boris Chain

1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller

1950 - Tadeus Reichstein

1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman

1953 - Hans Krebs

1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann

1958 - Joshua Lederberg

1959 - Arthur Kornberg

1964 - Konrad Bloch

1965 - Francois Jacob

1965 - Andre Lwoff

1967 - George Wald

1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg

1969 - Salvador Luria

1970 - Julius Axelrod

1970 - Si r Bernard Katz

1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman

1975 - Howard Martin Temin

1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg

1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow

1978 - Daniel Nathans

1980 - Baruj Ben acerraf

1984 - Cesar Milstein

1985 - Michael Stuart Brown

1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein

1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]

1988 - Gertrude Elion

1989 - Harold Varmus

1991 - Erwin Neher

1991 - Bert Sakmann

1993 - Richard J. Roberts

1993 - Phillip Sharp

1994 - Alfred Gilman

1995 - Edward B. Lewis

1996- Lu Rose Iacovino

TOTAL: 129!

The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.

There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church. There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more

Israel’. Benjamin Netanyahu

General Eisenhower Warned Us

It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect:

'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while the German people looked the other way.

Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people.

Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.

How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?