<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> <P> However, as claimed by Richard John Neuhaus in the November 2001 issue of First Things, when "asked in 1971 about the correct version of the quote, Niemöller said he was not quite sure when he had said the famous words but, if people insist upon citing them, he preferred a version that listed' the Communists',' the trade unionists',' the Jews', and' me' ." However, historian Harold Marcuse could not verify that interview . Rather, he found a 1976 interview in which Niemöller referred to a 1974 discussion with the general bishop of the Lutheran Church of Slovakia . </P>

Who said not to speak is to speak