Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. I simply, thinking about injustice and today's genocide and putting down of others, share some words I find powerful, and I pray I might have the courage where things are so wrong, even locally, to speak up and speak out. We pray for a world where no one lords it over another and destroys them because of difference.
Pastor Martin Niemoller was an ardent nationalist and prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last 7 years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
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.
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