MARTIN NIEMOLLER’S APOLOGY TO THE JEWS IN POST WORLD WAR II

            On this date, March 6, 1984, Pastor Martin Niemöller passed away at Wiesbaden. Let us not forget him. We will post two quotes from him where he gave his apology for what the Germans did to the Jews during World War II. 

Martin Niemöller

I have never concealed the fact and said it before the court in 1938 that I came from an anti-Semitic past and tradition... I ask only that you look at my life historically and take it as history. I believe that from 1933 I truly represented the Lutheran-Christian outlook on the Jewish question — as I revealed before the court — but that I returned home after eight years' imprisonment as a completely different person. [Letter to a Dr. Weiner (1956), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 334]

In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything--parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "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. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. 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.”

The lesson we can learn from here is that when the Justice System abolishes capital punishment and go easy on criminals, they should give repeated apologies to all the victims’ families who want justice. The Justice System must accept the guilt of failing the good people of the country by putting more innocent lives at risk.