PASTOR NIEMOLLER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 541, 4 November 1949, Page 12

PASTOR NIEMOLLER

A "Listener" Interview nn

ASTOR NIEMOLLER looked fresher than any of the other passengérs who came off the Sydney flying boat at Auckland, late in the afternoon of October 21. His wife was with him and two young Australians ‘in a uniform very

jike that of the air . force. They are two of the 14 full-time.. field-workers main-

tained by the Open Air Campaigners, the commando force of the Evangelical Churches. This body invited Pastor Niemoller to Australia and arranged his tour there. In New Zealand, Pastor Niemdller is sponsored by the Bible Training Institute and the Y.M.C.A. The little group of secretaries at the air-port agreed that the Pastor could not speak to the press that night. It was then a few minutes to six o’clock, and at 7.30 he must leave for a reception. He flipped open his gold watch. "We can be at the hotel-in five minutes? Yes? Then we have dinnerthat will not take long. I have some free time this evening after all, namely, be-

tween seven and seven thirty." He laughed and led the party away. * me a MARTIN NIEMOLLER is 57 years of age. He was trained for the sea, commanded a U-boat in the first World War, and received the Iron Cross, As his autobiography shows, his patriotism

was ‘quite unquestioning, and he had more than usual zest for the tech-

mique ang adcvefitures of war. Disgusted by the Armistice and the internal politics that followed it, he resigned from the Service and worked as a farm labourer, meaning to farm on his own account when he had learned the art. After about a year he began to feel that was evading responsibilities to a country that was in a state of hopelessness. He found he longed to be a clergyman (as his father was), though he had no great urge to preach. He studied at Munster, and helped to support himself and a growing family through these years by working in spare time as a plate-layer on the railways, as an accountant and

as a bank clerk. In 1931 he went to Dahlem, a wealthy parish on the outskirts of Berlin. He had disliked the neutral, secular policy of post-war German Governments, and voted for Hitler’s party in its early years, not only for the "posi-

tive Christianity" it professed, but for the hope it seemed to give of purpose and self-respect. In 1933 Hitler began to assume spiritual authority over the churches. Pastor Niemoller saw more clearly than most what was happening, (continued on next page)

and opposed more boldly. In 1937 he was finally "tfied" and imprisoned, and held there until 1945. He became the focus for the protests and prayers of Christians of all nations, and, as\ time went on, a symbol and a legend. * x * E came into the hotel lounge at precisely seven o’clock, and smoked an after-dinner cigar without letting it make any demands on his attention. He always knows what to do with his hands, He has a dark skin, and very dark, quick eyes, He is lean and lined, and appears to have the kind of good health people sometimes have who give themselves no time to think about it. "Yes, for a while after I was released from concentration camp, I was not so well. But I am sure I am stronger now, psychically and even physically, than I was in 1937." He is President of a large section of Evangelical Churches, those of Hesse and Nassau, about 900 in all. I asked him how the churches managed with the young who had been taught by the Nazis. "With the young we have the least difficulty of all. It is some of the older ones who are the trouble, the ones who cannot see that the bourgeois era is over for ever. We have had a real upheaval of everything, but some of them want the churches to go back and become just a stabilising influence as of old. That is the real difficulty-not the Hitler era. What the Hitler era left is a nihil, an emptiness, which is most favourable for Christianity. "You see, all those years man thought that he was in charge of his own fate, namely that he could accomplish everything. Of those ersatz. religions-you use the word ‘ersatz’ yourselves? — Hitler was the climax. Now that is shipwrecked. Man is nothing without that responsibility beyond himself that takes the human nature and grips it under its control. Without that divine authority everything goes to pieces. And we have seen it go to pieces." Pastor Niemoller feels that the only hope for Europe is a unity. brought about by the churches, "Any government Germany has can only follow on the administration of the Western Powers. But in ahy case, the Church is much more important than anything that happens politically. The Americans?Yes, that the Americans care for Europe is in itself one of the greatest causes of hope. We are too old, of course, to have their optimism. We do not understand what it is to feel like that. And the Americans-well, a child cannot understand how its grandparents feel." a * % HREE of the Pastor’s sons were conscripted, and the eldest died on the Russian front in 1945, One studies law and the other medicine; the -youngest, aged 14, is too young to decide. Of his three daughters, one died after the war, of diphtheria. He has three grandchildren. We asked after his parishioners at | Dahlem, now out of bounds. ‘ "They were wonderful. Do you know, there was a service of intercession in the church every night from the time I was imprisoned in 1937, until I was released in 1945. One time the whole congregation weré taken off in trucks to the police station and kept in gaol overnight. But there were too many of them to be kept there for long-it was silly." In a New York eating house recently, Pastor Niemoller enjoyed a motto hanging on the wall: "Eyen a fish wouldn’t

get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut." He said that he and his fellowclergy could have lived unmolested under Hitler if they had kept quiet, "I am very: grateful that at last we got into trouble, and were made to testify for the sake of those people who were on the verge of letting go for ever. There is a special meaning in these experiences made by Christian ‘congregations during the period of Hitler. In Germany we had a kind of trial that was not ever elsewhere, namely that we had in strong lines of black on white a struggle that was only in a shadow in other places. That is why I go when I am invited, to wherever anyone wishes to hear about it, even to the Antipodes." * * * HE Australian press had reported that Pastor Niemoller was interested in immigration possibilities for the many homeless Germans, and I asked him about this. He said that about 12,000,000 people had moved westward in Germany during recent years. They could not all be absorbed economically, they existed there on alms, many of them, and when he saw Australia wondering how to fill its spaces he thought of these. It was not just a temporary problem, this trend in Europe. Some eastern parts were much more densely populated, and there was a natural trend for the stronger, denser populations to push the others westward. It had happened before in history. "Of course many of these homeless ones hope that things will change, and they can go back to where they came from. But it is no use to try to turn the movement the other way. We have to manage to stand there as we are, making ourselves strong enough to last-for a few decades anyway. But this is just a guess, the way I look on this situation." | ‘ a * %* N_ the concentration camp Pastor Niemoller was given a Bible when he demanded it. Others did not have this privilege, and he found himself reading to people of other denominations who passed underneath his window. Later one of his parishioners sent him a Missal and he was able to read the Mass with a Catholic priest who worked outside in the yard. In Dachau he was with three Catholic priests whose devotions he shared each morning, and they read with him in the afternoons. They read the complete New Testament three times in Greek. At another time he studied with an Anglican, a Presbyterian and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. They celebrated Holy Communion together. "It came to seem natural, inevitable under those circumstances. But only slowly. You see I was a Lutheran, and a Lutheran is not very broadminded. This unity is something we had nearly forgotten. In 1937 I was brought without my planning, without my consent, among many whom before I would not) have acknowledged as Christian | brethren." After his release he was rebuked by fellow-churchmen for being so free with | other denominations. And -he was excused because circumstances had been abnormal. "But these abnormal circumstances are the only réal ones. This life in a concentration camp, this life in a Christian brotherhood-this was the only real life. And this that ‘ve live in other times, | thinking we have security-who of us_ knows that he will live to see tomor-

row’s sun shine?"

Dorothea

Turner