First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then 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 out for me

— Martin Niemöller

Martin Niemöller was a German Lutheran pastor active when the Nazis rose to power. Being a conservative, he applauded Hitler’s election, finally someone who would make Germany great again.

It took the Nazis threatening the church for him to realize that something was not right and start fighting back.

Interestingly, in 1968 a member of the US congress used a modified version of the poem in which he replaced the “communists” with the “industrialists”. This is particularly ironic because the original poem lists victims of Nazism while the industrialists have both hugely profited from Nazism and actively helped to put Hitler in power…