About

Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)

It may be surprising to some that a quotation of Martin Niemöller is displayed in a garden that honors 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust. The contradiction is that, despite having been confined in concentration camps for seven years, Niemöller had twice voted for the Nazi party, made numerous antisemitic statements and had never defended the Jews in the years before his incarceration in 1938.

As one of the principle leaders of the Confessing Church in Germany, Niemöller opposed Hitler’s plan to absorb churches into the Nazi system. He stood trial in February 1938 for failing to restrain his pastors from making subtle criticisms of the Nazi government in their Sunday sermons. During the one-month long trial, Herman Goering delivered a blistering speech against him. Niemöller was sentenced to seven months of prison. But because he had already been held for 7 1/2 months awaiting trial, he was to be released. Hitler was furious and stated, “He shall not be released until he’s broken.” Joseph Goebbels had wanted him executed but Alfred Rosenberg stopped it. Niemöller remained imprisoned until the American liberation of Dachau in 1945.

Martin Niemöller came out of Dachau a changed person. Matthew D. Hockenos, in his 2018 biography of Niemöller, wrote “His transformation from nationalist to internationalist, from militarist to pacifist, and from racist to antisemite to champion of all equality, all evinced a more general transformation - from provincial, narrow-minded chauvinist to compassionate, open-minded humanitarian.

A controversial figure, Niemöller will be remembered for his famous poem in which he chastised the bystander for not stepping up when the Nazis came to power - and for not resisting tyranny and an ideology that taught the superiority of an “Aryan race” over all others.