Pastor Martin Niemoeller was arrested in 1937 and spent the next 8 years in concentration camps as Hitler’s “personal prisoner.” That might have given him an alibi for the Nazi crimes of those years. But he believed there was no excuse for failing to speak out from the beginning.
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Especially for the persecution of the Jews—In the sufferings of all who had been persecuted during those years God in Jesus Christ had been saying to him, “Are you prepared to save me?” Sadly, he admitted, “I turned that service down.”
Niemoeller died March 5, 1984. In his last years he was a vigorous campaigner against nuclear weapons.
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