17 pages • 34 minutes read
Martin NiemöllerFirst They Came...
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1946A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Never Shall I Forget” by Elie Wiesel, translated by Marion Wiesel (1958)
Wiesel was a Romanian Jewish Holocaust survivor. He is best known for his 1956 memoir, Night, which recounts his imprisonment in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Like the Niemöller piece, there is debate over whether “Never Shall I Forget” is a poem or prose. Both pieces make heavy use of the refrain as a literary device.
“The Survivor” by Primo Levi, translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann (1988)
Chemist, writer, and member of the Italian resistance movement, Primo Levi’s family didn’t actively practice Judaism in his youth. Still, he suffered under the racial laws of Fascist Italy for being ethnically Jewish, and he was imprisoned at Auschwitz in 1944. This poem shares Niemöller’s focus on guilt and shame. It features a formerly imprisoned person haunted by the ghosts of those who did not survive the camps.
“A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto” by Czesław Miłosz (1973)
The speaker in this poem recounts the horrifying state of the Warsaw Ghetto using lyric language and lush imagery. Polish writer Czesław Miłosz explores the effects that mass violence and suffering have on individual people in their ordinary lives. Through the observations made in this poem, the speaker comes to share Niemöller’s existential regret for having been a bystander.
“Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freightcar” by Dan Pagis, translated by Stephen Mitchell (1970)
Israeli poet and Holocaust survivor Dan Pagis shares a plainspoken directness with Niemöller. This sparse poem ends abruptly, before the speaker can complete a message to their other son. Short lines and unfinished thoughts instill a feeling of loss in the reader, forcing them to consider what never made it onto the page.
“Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying” by Noor Hindi (2020)
Palestinian-American poet Noor Hindi reflects on violence with a bitter, ironic tone. With long, end-stopped lines, this poem is prose-like, reading almost like a speech or a manifesto from the poet. Like Niemöller, Noor addresses an audience of people unaffected by the violence against her people, wondering what it would be like to write poetry the way they do.
Further Literary Resources
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1937)
Like Niemöller, Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor, as well as a founding member of the Confessing Church. The Cost of Discipleship is considered a classic of modern Christian theology. Dietrich warns against “cheap grace” as a cover for immoral actions, a critique levelled directly at the pro-Nazi leadership of the Lutheran Church. He wrote equally influential correspondences with students and colleagues from 1943 until 1945, when he was executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp.
“Appendix II: The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt” from The Reluctant Revolutionary by John A. Moses (2009)
This is an English translation of the declaration by the council of the Protestant Church in Germany from 1945. In the wake of Nazi Germany’s fall, church leaders convened to determine a path forward. The confession accepts blame for the broad “infinite wrong” done by the church, both through its early support of Adolf Hitler and through its failure to oppose him more strongly. Niemöller is a signatory.
“The Poetry of World War II” by Poetry Foundation Editors (2016)
This sampler offers a selection of poetry written during and after the second World War. Organized by year from 1939 to 1993, this curated list succinctly tracks the English-speaking poetry community’s experience of the war at an international level.
Niemöller Quotation Page by Harold Marcuse (2000, last updated 2021)
Scholar and historian Harold Marcuse shares his extensive research on the origin of the Niemöller quote, its many forms, and its evolving context. Marcuse updates this website regularly, tracking contemporary usage of the poem by activists who modify the Niemöller poem to comment on a variety of issues.
Listen to Poem
Actress Margaret Toomey reads a common English variation of the Niemöller poem. This reading is part of a series, “The Art of Witness,” curated by Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality.
