First they came poem answers

Statement and poem attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller

"First they came ..." (German: Zuerst kamen sie ...) is the poetic form of a 1946 post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984).

It is about the silent complicity of German intellectuals and clergy following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets. Many variations and adaptations in the spirit of the original have been published in the English language.

It deals with themes of persecution, guilt, repentance, solidarity, and personal responsibility.^{[citation needed]}

Text

The best-known versions of the confession in English are the edited versions in poetic form that had begun circulating by the 1950s.^[1] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum quotes the following text as one of the many poetic versions of the speech:^[2][3]

First they came for the socialists,