Pastor Martin Niemöller Redux

Back in the 1940’s Martin Niemöller, a prominent German theologian and Lutheran pastor wrote a prophetic poem, condemning the silence of all those intellectuals reluctant to put a bold front on the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their targeted population groups.

His poem, brought nowadays to my country and its current harsh political situation, would more or less take the following version:

" First came the Communists, And I didn’t speak up although I was a Democrat;

Then came the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up although I was a worker;

Then came the private cartels, And I didn’t speak up although I was a consumer;

Then came the Big State, And I didn’t speak up although I was a tax payer

And then . . . my time came . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up. "