God Is My Fuehrer

A Memory From One Neighborhood I Lived In - - -  Joe Todd

I lived in the Hawthorne Hotel across from George WashingtonUniversity student union from 8/1956 to 8/1958. It was only about 5 blocks from the White House.  I was in the U.S.Navy at the time.

I came across this poem by Rev. Martin Niemoller when I was wandering around the neighborhood one sunny Saturday morning.  I found it while leafing through a book on a stand outside a used bookstore.  My mind was immediately imprinted with its implications.

 God Is My Fuehrer - - -

First they came for the Communists,

and I didn’t speak up,

because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak up,

because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn’t speak up,

because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,

and by that time there was no one

left to speak up for me.

Niemoller  (1892-1984) was a German Lutheran minister who opposed Nazi injustice.

Rev. Niemoller could have added after each time he said “and I did not speak up” . . . “and I am not responsible for those people and their problems.” But instead, he realized he was responsible for all humans’ well being and acted upon this conviction to follow God’s will and he did speak up. He did speak up and spent WWII from 1937 to 1945 in Dachau concentration camp. He did follow God.

I heard Niemoller speak a number of years later in about 1963 at Ohio Wesleyan University while doing my internship in school psychology at the Delaware Public Schools. “God Is My Fuehrer” - his talk made a significant impact upon me.

What is the implication & responsibility for each one of us in our own daily lives? To love God and to love my neighbor.

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”  Matthew 22:37-39

God is my priority and leader above all other authorities, factors and influences in my life.

 “We ought to obey God rather than men”  Acts 5:29

“I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded” Nephi 3:7

Joe Todd

June 2013