Mistakenly attributed "Dietrich Bonhoeffer" quote
mar...@hbe.org#removethiswhenreplying
Subject: Re: (Romanian) Far-Right Extremist Websites
From: bv...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Stephen Dancs)
Date: 1997/04/30
Message-Id: <5k6vje$7...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.romanian,soc.culture.magyar
Stephan Dancs wrote:
{
>>Or you want to wait to speak up untill -- to paraphrase Dietrich
>>Bonhoeffer -- they'll come after you and there will be no one left to
>>stand up for you? Chamberlain tried that one, with known results.
>
> This phrase got a bit over and misused lately, I'm afraid. But it
> sounds good as a rethorical device, I must admit.
Well, if it's so overused, why don't you make a tiny effort and fetch it
for us from somewhere, 'cause in my message I asked someone who knows the
quote exactly, to provide it again for me because I've read it long time
ago and have no ideea from where I could have it again.
}
To Steve and all,
I was doing some research on Deitrich Bonhoeffer using Deja News when I
came across this request for the original quote you refer to. I'd just
seen this quote and so to put you onto the right track I post this
reference. It turns out it was not Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said this, but
rather his friend and fellow pastor Martin Niemoller. Here's a reference,
that gives a longer essay than I'll quote here.
http://forerunner.com/champion/X0006_5._Martin_Niemller.html
Below's an excerpt from that essay that explains the context of the quote
and gives the precise quote.
Marcus
*************************************************************************
Martin Niemöller: The Resistance (1892-1984)
Martin Niemöller had been a World War I hero as a German naval lieutenant
and U-boat commander. He was ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 1924. One of
the earliest Protestant critics of Nazism, he and a few brave Lutherans
formed a resistance movement called the "Confessional Church" of about
3,000 pastors. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, author of The Cost of Discipleship,
came into contact with Niemöller when he joined the "Pastor's Emergency
League," which was formed under Niemöller.
[for brevity snipped stuff about how the NAZIs persecuted the Christians
and Jews]
Pastors who resisted the neo-Pagan religion of the Nazis were jailed. Many
were eventually led to the gas ovens of the concentration camps. Millions
of Jews and Christians were executed. The sad state of the liberal
Protestant churches led Germany to this holocaust. Although there were
enough evangelical Christian leaders strategically positioned throughout
Germany in the 1930s to resist Hitler; only a few stood against him.
"Not many Germans lost much sleep over the arrests of a few thousand
pastors and priests or over the quarreling of Protestant sects. And even
fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Borman and
Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended to destroy
Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of
the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi
extremists. As Bormann, one of the men closest to Hitler, said in 1941,
'National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable.'"1
As the methods of oppression by the Nazis grew worse, the resistance
movement justified previously unimagined types of disobedience. For
Niemöller and the resistance, the plan to assassinate a tyrant was a
matter of obedience to God. They reasoned that Hitler was anti-Christ,
therefore they decided to join the underground plan to eliminate him.
Niemöller remained a key figure in the resistance movement until his
arrest and imprisonment. In 1937, Niemöller preached his last sermon in
the Third Reich knowing that he was soon to be arrested:
"We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of
authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep
silent at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must
remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man."2
Under orders from Hitler, he was imprisoned and finally transferred to the
infamous Dachau concentration camp until the end of the war in 1945. He
emerged from his years of detention as a towering symbol of the Church's
struggle. In his travels to America, he addressed over two hundred
audiences, sometimes with the concluding words that have become famous:
"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 did much more than speak out, however, as did his friend
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As a consequence, Bonhoeffer lost his life and
Niemöller lost eight years of his freedom.
1) William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall the Third Reich (Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1960) p.234-239. 2) Christian History, "Dietrich
Bonhoeffer," Issue 32 (Vol. X, No.4), p.20.
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Stephen Dancs
(mar...@hbe.org#RemoveThisWhenReplying) writes:
>
> "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."
>
> It turns out it was not Dietrich Bonhoeffer who said this, but
> rather his friend and fellow pastor Martin Niemoller. Here's a reference,
> that gives a longer essay than I'll quote here.
>
> http://forerunner.com/champion/X0006_5._Martin_Niemller.html
It has to be a mistake. Niemller might have been finishing his speeches
with the famous quote, but the quote is definitively Bonhoeffer's,
although I can't recall from which one of his writings.
(Note: Answers to this posting will be monitored mainly on the
"soc.culture.romanian" newsgroup.)
Cheers,
--*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
Stephen Dancs Tel./Fax: +1 (416) 963-9624
bv...@freenet.carleton.ca http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~bv561/