Martin Niemöller’s poem ‘First they came for the Communists’ clearly describes to the reader the steps the Nazis took to “purify the German race”. In his poem, Niemöller writes about how the Nazis came for certain groups in society like Jews, communists and trade unionsts and how nobody tried to stand up for them. People stayed quiet because they were afraid or thought the Nazis were doing Germany a favour. Alfons Heck, a former Hitler Youth described this in his autobiography A Child of Hitler, ‘Unless one was Jewish, a gyspy, a homosexual or a political opponent of Nazism, Germany had become a land of promise.”
A concentration camp in Buchenwald, where prisoners, like Niemöller and other groups described in the poem would have been sent.
Image curtsey of jewishgen.org
Image curtsey of jewishgen.org