Then they came for me.

This banner was displayed in front of Emanuel Lutheran Church in New Brunswick on our Christian Education Building. Pastor Martin Miemoller proclaimed these challenging words in response to the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany in World War II.

Pastor Niemoller was a German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor.

In this poem, Pastor Niemoller condemns the cowardice of German intellectuals and leaders of the Protestant churches and their complicity, following the Nazis' rise to power and their purging of various groups. For his role as an outspoken critic of Hitler, he spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.