i didn't speak up because i wasn't a jew. and then they came for me and by that time, no one was left to speak up. the pastor's words are well known but their context are not well understood. he wasn't speaking abstractly. he witnessed persecution, acquiesced to it and fell victim to it. he welcomed the fall of german democracy and the rise of hitler and had few qualms about the beginning of the holocaust until he himself was arrested for supporting it in insufficiently. his confessional warning came first in a speech in frankfurt in january, 1946, eight months after he had been liberated by american troops. he had been detained for seven years. he survived the death camps. in quoting him, i make no direct comparison between the attempts to suppress the building of a religious muslim center in downtown manhattan and the unimaginable nightmare of the holocaust. such a comparison is ludicrous,