NIEMOLLER VISITS AUSTRALIA: EVANGELICAL TOUR

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 August 1949, Page 5

NIEMOLLER VISITS AUSTRALIA: EVANGELICAL TOUR

SYDNEY, This Day (Rec. 1 p.m.).— Pastor Martin Niemoller, German submarine commander in World War I fiery preacher and for eight years Hitler’s personal prisoner, reached Sydney by air last night only five days after’ leaving Frankfurt. Pastor Niemoller, who is accompanied by his wife, is to make a 10weeks’ evangelical tour of Australia and New Zealand. He was invited to Australia by a non-sectarian group of evangelists. Asked his opinion of Hitler, he said: “I had only one interview with the man and that was catastrophic.” Pastor Niemoller said Hitler took three years to make up his mind about him. Niemoller was arrested in 1937 and stayed behind barbed wire until his release at easter in 1945.,. Pastor Niemoller said he learned English at a grammar school, but read many English books during his imprisonment and picked up conversational English while staying in Naples with American officers after the war. His main impression of a visit he paid to the Soviet zone of Germany* five weeks ago was the flourishing condition of the churches. The Russians had not touched the church in Germany, except to ban all gatherings in the open air. The Germans in the Soviet zone were very much to the left politically, but he believed that this was a matter of expediency and nothing more than a pathetic attempt to placate the Russians.