Dear Editor,
“Then they came for me…”
One hundred years ago, on June 29, 1924, a German pastor was ordained into the German Lutheran Church. I doubt very many in Cincinnati at the time, or throughout our country, were even aware of the moment. Why would they have been? President Calvin Coolidge had just signed the Indian Citizenship Act granting citizenship to all indigenous Native Americans, and the brand name Kleenex was used for the first time in commerce.
And yet, many in our community, and around the globe know of a particular summary statement of the horrific events of World War II.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The author of that quote was Pastor Martin Niemoeller, ordained exactly 100 years ago. Pastor Niemoeller was a World War I U-Boat and submarine commander and received an Iron Cross for his bravery and naval success. When he went from U-Boat to Pulpit (the title of his autobiography) he charted a course that would bring him accolades far greater than the Iron Cross. While he was an initial supporter of Hitler, he soon came to realize Hitler’s arrogance, his desire to supplant Nazism for Christianity, and eventually the antisemitism he witnessed firsthand. I have his copy of “Mein Kampf,” and the sections he underlined which buttressed his turn against Hitler. In 1937 he was arrested for crimes against the State, and eventually spent eight years in prison and concentration camps as Hitler’s personal prisoner — a potential bargaining chip for a captured high-profile Nazi. I have some of his personal library from Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. I never met Pastor Niemoeller, nor did I ever meet his children (his first wife died in a tragic car accident in 1961).
I came to know Pastor Niemoeller, the German war hero, the clergyman, the prisoner, the pacifist, and the world-renowned lecturer, through his second wife, Sarah (Sybille von Sell) Niemoeller. They married in 1971. Sarah was not only an eyewitness to history and her famous husband, but her own story is also one of inspired active resistance against Nazism. Sarah Niemoeller was a child in the church where Pastor Niemoeller served. Her family, the von Sell family, was highly engaged in an underground railroad to save Jews from deportation to death camps. They also were involved in the 1944 failed plot to kill Hitler.
I brought Sarah Niemoeller to lecture at Xavier University and in our Cincinnati community several times. With each meeting our relationship deepened. At her request, we even met in Washington at the Holocaust Memorial Museum to whom she had given Pastor Niemoeller’s typewriter, the one on which he had written his famous quote. For more than a decade we exchanged emails every single Friday, always concluding with shared wishes for Shabbat Shalom, a Sabbath of peace. Her journey from German Baroness to Pastor Niemoeller’s wife eventually led her to embrace Judaism, and she lived her last decades as a very proud Jewish woman. Her recall of events, her humor, her political acumen and her passion to keep the Niemoeller name alive, rewarded me with some of the finest correspondence I have ever encountered. At each of my birthdays, Sarah presented me with a beautiful and meaningful memento of her family’s life, their aristocratic heritage, and Pastor Niemoeller’s life. At age 99, Sarah entered into hospice care, and I traveled once more to Pennsylvania to bid my farewell. At the end of our day together, she gave me the ring she had fashioned from her and Martin’s gold wedding rings, inscribed with his name and date of his death (6.3.1984). It sits in my library next to the delicate burl wood case given to her mother by Queen Augusta Victoria, the wife of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Life rewarded me with this incredible friendship, her passing did not change anything.
When her estate was finalized, I inherited all of her shared love letters with Pastor Niemoeller, large collections of his handwritten sermons, photographs and awards, and the Bibles and breviaries he used in his pulpit. In honor of his ordination, I will read a sermon or two. I just might need a Kleenex.
Rabbi Abie Ingber, President
Yahad in Unum Mid-America
Cincinnati, OH