First they came… (1946) by Martin Niemöller

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

As the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
As they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
As they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
As they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak out.

Seventy years ago today, the Allies accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and the Third Reich was over. It was the end of World War II in Europe.

The poem above (original version and translated, published in "They Thought They Were Free") was written by Martin Niemöller, German theologian and Lutheran pastor. It's a reflection on the dangers of apathy, addressed first and foremost to the German intellectuals, amongst which he included himself, that did nothing during the rise to power of the Nazis to stop the destruction they announced. The author was detained between 1937 and 1945 in Sachsenhausen and Dachau in compliance with a direct order from Hitler, but survived. After the end of the war, he was one of the writers of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (1945), in which the council of the  Evangelical Church in Germany acknowledge its failure in opposing the Nazis. Niemöller went on to became a vigorous anti-war activist, fighting, for example, for nuclear disarmament, until his death in 1984.