Truths and lies of the most famous poem against the danger of indifference: who wrote it?

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing".
(Edmund Burke -1729-1797-, writer, philosopher, Irish politician, father of British conservative liberalism)

This brief axiom has a profound universal meaning: the terrible consequences of human indifference.

No for nothing Dante Alighieri, in the third song of the Divine Comedyhe asks Virgilio, his guide to hell, "What are those sighs, tears and tears that resonate in the air without stars?", and he responds that they "come from Anti-Hell, where the sad souls who lived are punished, without infamy and without honor, they are the ignovos, souls who in life have done neither good nor bad because of their choice of cowardice ".

But indifference, the indifferent, are not surrounded by these only examples and condemnations.

In the Holocaust Memorial of the United States this poem is recorded:

"They first came for the Socialists,
and I did not say anything, because I was not a socialist.
Then they came to pick up the trade unionists,
and I did not say anything because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came to fetch the Jews,
and I did not say anything because I was not Jewish.
Then they came to get me
and there was no one to speak for me anymore "

The author was the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), headed like an arrow in the heart of German intellectuals, whose cowardice – among other factors – allowed the arrival of the Nazis in power and its terrible consequences.

But Niemöller did not limit himself to these words: at the same pace, he added the Communists, the incurable patients, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the civilians of the countries occupied by Nazism, who did nothing to to prevent it except the honorable sacrificed role of the resistance movements.

In another variant of the poem, he also added Catholics, schools, press … and in 1968, a member of the American Congress added: "the industrialists who were not persecuted by the Nazis and agreed to live under this tyranny "

This is not a minor data Niemöller, in 1937, was arrested and confined in the Schsenhausen and Dachau camps until 1945.when the Allied troops released him.

But the famous poem, whose noble spirit can only be despised by mediocrity and stupidity, It is also the protagonist of a controversy for his paternity.

According to the other half of the dictionary, the author was the great German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), who bequeathed masterpieces such as The three hundred opera, Mother Courage and her children, The good soul of Szechwan, The chalk circle of the Caucasus …and essays and poems burned by the Nazis.

However, it's a misunderstanding that started in the 70's and that does not stop …

The poem, repeated until exhaustion in written and oral form, and sometimes titled "L & # 39; indifferent" (an addition to the original, which had no name), changed hands, so to speak, out of ignorance: Pastor Niemöller was much less known (or barely) while Brecht and his pieces multiplied like bread and fish Biblical.

This crack inspired some admirers of the author, convinced that the poem and its message coincided with the style and political line of Brecht, communist – Niemölller was not! -, to attribute it with a weight of dogma … and squeezed it until the beginning. last drop for the revolutionaries and artists of the seventies, in the same way that they concocted the apocryphal "Latin American Bible".

Among us, the priestess of misunderstanding was the actress Lincovsky Cipe (1933-2015), friend of Brecht's widow, Hélène Weigel (1900-1971), He swore that the poem was completely Brechtian and written in Berlin in 1933 after Hitler's triumph in the elections.

Cipe recited it seventy times seven times, but its text differs from the original:

"They took the Jews first,
but I did not care because I was not there.
Then they arrested the communists,
but as I was not a communist, I did not care either.
Later, they arrested the workers,
but as I was not a worker, I did not care either.
Then they stopped the students,
but as I was not a student, I did not care either.
Finally they arrested the priests,
but as I was not religious, I did not care either.
Now they take me, but it's too late. "

By the way, from time to time, it appears like "anonymous author", and with additions: one of them, homobaduals …

However, its message and its validity remain beyond controversy. What is important is to remember, how Edmond BurkeWhat? Indifference is a definitive door open to Evil.

In any case, the Niemöller-Brecht affair is going on as well as the dreadful poem "Instants" Endilgado to Borges, with grotesque allusions to ice and calesitas … The three, despite these betrayals, and each in his own, continue in Parnbadus.