Germany II

One of my big "tourist" goals in visiting Germany, more than Reformation sites, more than additional churches and museums, more than eating as much bratwurst as could possibly be eaten, was to visit a concentration camp. I wanted to see what we had always learned about in school, about the horrors of institutionalized hate and murder, that was mandated by government, and tacitly condoned by the Church. The careful calculations of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, its careful design, security perimeters, lavish grounds for the SS officers, the landmarks of torture and incarceration, the gas chambers and incinerators... it was really too much for me at several points... To know that an entire peoples allowed such horrors to happen, in their time, while they were eating and drinking and living on the "outside" (for many of these camps were found sidled right next to residential areas in town), made me shrink in horror at my own apathy to suffering and evil...
One thing that spoke to me was how Pastor Niemöller, one of the prime leaders of the Confessional Church, the only Christians at the time to speak out against these atrocities, for which they too were sent to the concentration camps, was considered "Hitler's personal prisoner" because of his status... Pastor Niemöller at several points in his incarceration wavered in his faith and his convictions, but emerged with a stronger faith, and a desire to foster unity within the Church, after it had done so poorly in defending the defenceless, and speaking for the voiceless.
His is the poem that spoke most eloquently at the time for the travesty of staying silent in the face of injustice:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.