“At first they came after the communists, and I was silent because I was not a communist. Then they came after the trade union members, and I was silent because I was not a trade union member. Then they came after the Jews, I was silent because I was not a Jew. Then they came after me, and there was no one left who could protect me.” This oft-repeated, one might even say “worn-out” quote belongs to the German Protestant priest Martin Niemöller. It is a quote from the sermon that the priest read in 1946, and naturally it is about the crimes of the Nazis.
But not everyone knows the context in which that christomatic formulation was uttered. The whole problem is that Niemöller himself was once a Nazi, an anti-communist, and an anti-Semite. Therefore, he was not only “silent” when they came after the communists, union members, and Jews, but also, perhaps, he rejoiced in his soul. In Hitler, who came to power in 1933, he saw a “national-conservative” figure who would put an end to the chaos of the Weimar Republic, and Niemöller blamed the “leftists” and the Jews for that chaos. He became a member of the Nazi party, and this circumstance did not interfere with his church service at first. But then it was “interrupted”- seeing that something was going wrong, the priest said during one of his sermons that one should obey God and not man. Hitler, of course, did not like it, after which, within the framework of the “struggle against the supremacy of the church,” the priest was imprisoned for 7 years. He spent the last 4 years of that period in the Dachau concentration camp. After getting his freedom, Niemöller started talking about “national repentance,” and it was in that context that he came up with the quoted famous formula.
What does this story teach? You should not rejoice in the political persecution of a person, regardless of whether you like that person’s image or not, whether you share or not share their political views. For me, the political persecutions that have taken place in our country since 1994, including the persecutions of Ter-Petrossian’s supporters (including Pashinyan) in 2008, the persecution of Hrayr Tovmasyan, allies, Mamikon Aslanyan, Avetik Chalabyan is equally unacceptable today. Today, there are people who rejoice over this latest repression; they think that they have taken revenge on “former criminals.” But that joy is illusory.
When you, based on political or personal preferences, encourage the government to indulge itself, it does not end well. Neither the “blacks” benefit from it, nor the “whites.”
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Aram Abrahamyan
