<P> I believe, we Confessing - Church - Christians have every reason to say: mea culpa, mea culpa! We can talk ourselves out of it with the excuse that it would have cost me my head if I had spoken out . </P> <P> This speech was translated and published in English in 1947, but was later retracted when it was alleged that Niemöller was an early supporter of the Nazis . The "sick, the so - called incurables" were killed in the euthanasia programme "Aktion T4". A 1955 version of the speech, mentioned in an interview of a German professor quoting Niemöller, lists Communists, socialists, schools, Jews, the press, and the Church . An American version delivered by a congressman in 1968 includes industrialists, who were not persecuted by the Nazis, and omits Communists . </P> <P> In 1976, Niemöller gave the following answer in response to an interview question asking about the origins of the poem . The Martin - Niemöller - Stiftung ("Martin Niemöller Foundation") considers this the "classical" version of the speech: </P> <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>

First they came for the socialists poem meaning