<P> There were no minutes or copy of what I said, and it may be that I formulated it differently . But the idea was anyhow: The Communists, we still let that happen calmly; and the trade unions, we also let that happen; and we even let the Social Democrats happen . All of that was not our affair . The Church did not concern itself with politics at all at that time, and it shouldn't have anything do with them either . In the Confessing Church we didn't want to represent any political resistance per se, but we wanted to determine for the Church that that was not right, and that it should not become right in the Church, that's why already in' 33, when we created the pastors' emergency federation (Pfarrernotbund), we put as the 4th point in the founding charter: If an offensive is made against ministers and they are simply ousted as ministers, because they are of Jewish lineage (Judenstämmlinge) or something like that, then we can only say as a Church: No . And that was then the 4th point in the obligation, and that was probably the first contra - anti-Semitic pronouncement coming from the Protestant Church . </P> <P> Martin Niemöller was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian born in Lippstadt, Germany, in 1892 . Niemöller was an anti-Communist and supported Adolf Hitler's rise to power at first . But when Hitler insisted on the supremacy of the state over religion, Niemöller became disillusioned . He became the leader of a group of German clergymen opposed to Hitler . In 1937 he was arrested and eventually confined in Sachsenhausen and Dachau . He was released in 1945 by the Allies . He continued his career in Germany as a clergyman and as a leading voice of penance and reconciliation for the German people after World War II . His statement, sometimes presented as a poem, is well - known, frequently quoted, and is a popular model for describing the dangers of political apathy . </P> <P> The statement was published in a book by Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free (1955), based on interviews he had conducted in Germany several years earlier . The quotation was circulated by civil rights activists and educators in the United States in the late 1950s . Some research traces the text to several speeches given by Niemöller in 1946 . </P> <P> Nonetheless, the wording remains controversial, both in terms of its provenance, and the substance and order of the groups that are mentioned in its many versions . While Niemöller's published 1946 speeches mention Communists, the incurably ill, Jews or Jehovah's Witnesses (depending on which speech), and people in occupied countries, the 1955 text, a paraphrase by a German professor in an interview, lists communists, socialists, "the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on", and ends with "the Church". Based on the explanation given by Niemöller himself in 1976, this refers to the German Protestant (' Evangelische') Church, and not to the German Catholic Church . </P>

When was the first they came poem written
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