Martin Niemller Martin Niemller, born January 14, 1892 in Lippstadt, Germany and died 6th March 1984,

Wiesbaden, West Germany, was an anti- Nazi pastor and theologist. Niemller was the son of a pastor who fought in the First World War as a German U-Boat commander. After the war he studied theology and in 1931 became a pastor in Berlin. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, in protest against the Nazis trying to control the Church he set up the Pastors Emergency League, trying to stop discrimination against Christians of Jewish descent who were considered to be Jews by the Nazis based on the religion of their grandparents. Niemller joined two other men Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and formed the Confessional Church. The resistance of the Confessing Church was openly declared. Niemller continued to preach throughout Germany and in 1937 was arrested by Hitlers secret police, the Gestapo. He was eventually sent to the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and then Dachau, he was moved in 1945 to the Tirol in Austria, where Allied forces freed him at the end of World War II. He helped rebuild the Evangelical Church in Germany, gradually working up the ranks. After the war he is best for his words on the Third Reichs racial policies;

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

The precise meaning of the poem is unknown however the most commonly accepted meaning is that the poem is saying that we shouldn't stand aside and let oppression occur simply because we aren't the target or victims of oppression, because one day we might become the victims and then nobody will defend us, as happened to him in Nazi Germany.

Dietrich Bonhoffer Dietrich Bonhoffer was born Breslau, Germany, on 4th February, 1906. He studied theology in Tubingen and in New York. Bonhoffer returned to Germany and began lecturing in theology He hated fascism and decided to flee Germany when Hitler came to power, and lived in London. However when he heard that that Martin Niemller and Karl Barth had formed the anti-Nazi Confessional Church he moved back to Germany to assist them. After the Second World War started, the Gestapo banned him from preaching. Bonhoffer then joined the Abwehr, a German military intelligence group, which was anti-Nazi Resistance group that had support high up in the Nazi Regime. He help plan many assassination attempts against Hitler. In his time at the organisation he was able to help many Jews escape the Nazis into Switzerland. On 5 April 1943, Bonhoffer was arrested not for conspiracy, but because of long-standing rivalry between SS and Abwehr for stealing intelligence. He was imprisoned by the SS for misusing his position, and helping Jews escape. He still remained active whilst in a military prison and was able to coordinate assassination attempts against Hitler thanks to sympathetic prison guards passing information. After the failure of the 20 July Plot on Hitler's life in 1944 in which a bomb was placed in a brief case just a few metres away from Hitler and the discovery in September 1944 of secret Abwehr documents relating to the conspiracy, Bonhoffer's connection with the conspirators was discovered. He was transferred from the military prison in Berlin Tegel, where he had been held for 18 months, to the detention cellar of the house prison of the Reich Security Head Office, the Gestapo's highsecurity prison. In February 1945, he was secretly moved to Buchenwald concentration camp, and finally to Flossenbrg concentration camp. Hitler found out about the Abwehrs activities by reading the head of Abwehrs diary and ordered all conspirators to be destroyed. He was hanged at Flossenbrg concentration camp on 9 April 1945 just three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin.