The NJ Police Chief Magazine Volume 23, Number 6 | Page 13

The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | June 2017
Continued from previous page
Understandably, Pastor Martin Niemöller was described by the Nazis as an 'undesirable' and suffered later in a
concentration camp. It was during his time in the camp that he wrote the above poem, and other poems, explaining
how he came to be in the concentration camp.
As police officers, we defend human rights, we protect the vulnerable, this is our raison d'être as many enquiries,
including the independent inquiry into policing in Northern Ireland, have determined over the years. But why was
the action against the Jews in the Netherlands quite so vitriolic, were they more anti-semitic? Did they buy-in to
Nazism? We think, far from it. It appears that a higher percentage of the Jewish population were persecuted for a
number of reasons, firstly the geography (the area is lowland and nowhere to hide and the borders were occupied
all around); secondly the history (The Netherlands were