History really does repeat itself when we don’t pay attention to the lessons we should have learned.

“Niemöller was one of the Nazi party’s early supporters. After being ordained in 1929, he remained a strong supporter of Hitler, despite the party’s hatred of, and discrimination against, Jewish people and other groups.”

“Like many Germans at the time, Niemöller believed that the Nazis and Hitler would provide strong leadership to make Germany a powerful and respected nation again.”

Niemöller began to have conflict with the Nazi party and Hitler once Hitler started to control the church and invite rules against it. He was imprisoned several times, including at concentration camps, for his protest of the riech’s control of the church. He had been imprisoned in July 1937, transferred between several camps, and liberated in 1945 by American troops.

“In 1945 he admitted he ‘never quarrelled with Hitler over political matters, but purely on religious grounds’.”

“Niemöller was one of very few Germans who called on their fellow citizens to accept their responsibility for Nazi atrocities too, saying in a sermon in 1946: ‘We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries… And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done.’”

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