Dr. Niemoller Discusses Unity In Europe

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29932, 20 September 1962, Page 15

Dr. Niemoller Discusses Unity In Europe

People in West Europe talked as if Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other Iron Curtain countries did not belong to Europe; it was nonsense to build a political unity in Europe excluding those countries, said Dr. Martin Niemolier, a president of the World Council of Churches, who visited Christchurch yesterday.

He was not much interested in today’s European Economic Community as a basis

for European development, because so many European countries were outside it, he said. Dr. Niemoller, who is also president of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau, said there were 1200 churches in his region of Germany for him to look after, and he would serve as president until 1966. This was his third term in the office he has held since 1947. A U-boat commander in the German Navy during the First World War, Dr. Niemoller was a special prisoner of Hitler from 1937 to 1945 because of his leadership of the Christian resistance movement. “No Active Nazis” No active Nazis were working in Germany today. Dr. Niemoller said. People in Western Germany did not Germany. He will be home only four days before he attends a European church con. ference. He will visit Britain early next year. Dr Niemoller said he considered that in the last three years there had been much progress in the World Council of Churches, the interest in it going right down to local chinches.

know what Nazism was, and there was no danger of its coming back. There W'as comparatively good support for the Church is his own region, but in the north it had declined, he said. It was declining everywhere in Western Germany because of the long period of prosperity. That always seemed to happen in any part of the world. Dr. Niemoller has been touring Australia and New Zealand giving lectures on behalf of the British add Foreign Bible Society. For some weeks in each year he visits countries to lecture in support of the society. "Bible Week” in Wellington was the core of his visit to New Zealand. Each evening about 600 persons attended the services, and there were 2500 at the closing service in the town hall. Return to Christchurch Dr. Niemoller will visit Dunedin and Invercargill and return to Christchurch on September 22. He will be in Christchurch until September 25, and will be the guest of the Bishop of Christchurch (the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren) during his stay. He will speak at a public meeting in the Civic Theatre on the afternoon of September 23, and will preach in the Cathedral that evening.

When Dr. Niemoller’s tour of New Zealand ends he will leave Christchurch by air for Sydney on his way back to