Why I Speak Out
Moss David Posner M.D.
October 16, 2005
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemoeller.
Of course being Jewish, I won’t have to worry about that; I can count on it. At least I can take out some of them first. And that’s exactly what I am going to do this coming Tuesday.
Martin Niemoller was one of those wonderful people that spoke out during The Holocaust--the German Lutherans. Another was Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, also one of the Flossenberg Martyrs.
I have always had a particular affinity for Bonhoeffer, and I never understood why. He was born in 1906. He studied theology in London and New York. He taught Theology in Berlin, publish several important papers on Theology and wrote a number of books. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he went to London where he continued his teaching and writing; but when he heard that Niemoller and Karl Barth had formed the overtly anti-Nazi Confessional Church, he returned to Germany and continued his work with them.
There isn?t a shred of doubt in my mind that my articles and help to inmates are the basis for the attack on the part of the Department (CDCr) that I am now fighting. I have been put on ATO, Administrative Time Off, a month ago, by some coincidence. This is preparatory to being fired. This was necessitated because, by an equal coincidence, it seems that irrefutable and unforgivable egregious errors in medical care and judgment were, after two and one-half years, fortuitously discovered--just before this hearing. I have examined the “evidence” shown to me, and, as nothing specific was pointed out, for the life of me, I don?t see anything wrong; but what do I know?
With the outbreak of WWII in 1939 the Gestapo closed down Bonhoeffer?s seminary; nonetheless, Bonhoeffer and the others continued their work, in public view, until they were arrested in 1943, and sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
In June or July of 2003, I found a picture drawn on my examining room table. It consisted of parallel pictures--two in number. Each showed, in graphic detail, a human heart, each, with a dagger plunged through it. From the tip of each exiting blade, there were drops of blood---appropriately colored red--dripping onto a typical six-pointed star, similar to that seen on synagogues and on the Israeli flag. It was immediately labeled “a death threat” by a custody captain. The person who did it publicly volunteered that fact. That person was not an inmate. Despite a pending investigation, this person was promoted.
Bonhoeffer was a poet as well. He spoke of imprisonment that made it a palpable reality. Chuch Colson, one of President Nixon's henchman who did time in a federal penitentiary said, of Bonhoeffer’s poems: “When I was in prison, no writings encouraged me more than Bonhoeffer’s.”
The Chief Medical Officer has, on the record, during an investigation, denied everything that I swore was said in conversations over the past year and a half. It might remotely be considered a difference in recollection of events--except for the simple fact that I kept a daily diary and have done so for the past four years. Detailed conversations---including verbatim quotes?were totally contradicted. So clearly, either the CMO has a photographic memory matched only by my perjurous imagination, or there is a simpler explanation. And granting his integrity, I cannot imagine what that would be. Equally as miraculous was the disappearance of my diary from a desk in the hospital during a five-minute interval.
Here is an excerpt from perhaps Bonhoeffer’s most famous poem, “Who Am I.” His reaction is indistinguishable from that of any inmate, anywhere, and at any time:
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?”
On October 18th there will be a State Personnel Board Hearing at Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran California. I do not regret one second of care and attention I have given the inmates. I wish I had it all to do over, so I could do it exactly the same way again. I may not comprehend much, but for the first time, I understand why I admire Bonhoeffer so very much.
In 1945, as the war was ending, these men---the Flossenberg Martyrs, including Bonhoeffer?were executed.
I don’t come up to his knees. He puts me to shame.
Pastor Martin Niemoeller.
Of course being Jewish, I won’t have to worry about that; I can count on it. At least I can take out some of them first. And that’s exactly what I am going to do this coming Tuesday.
Martin Niemoller was one of those wonderful people that spoke out during The Holocaust--the German Lutherans. Another was Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, also one of the Flossenberg Martyrs.
I have always had a particular affinity for Bonhoeffer, and I never understood why. He was born in 1906. He studied theology in London and New York. He taught Theology in Berlin, publish several important papers on Theology and wrote a number of books. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he went to London where he continued his teaching and writing; but when he heard that Niemoller and Karl Barth had formed the overtly anti-Nazi Confessional Church, he returned to Germany and continued his work with them.
There isn?t a shred of doubt in my mind that my articles and help to inmates are the basis for the attack on the part of the Department (CDCr) that I am now fighting. I have been put on ATO, Administrative Time Off, a month ago, by some coincidence. This is preparatory to being fired. This was necessitated because, by an equal coincidence, it seems that irrefutable and unforgivable egregious errors in medical care and judgment were, after two and one-half years, fortuitously discovered--just before this hearing. I have examined the “evidence” shown to me, and, as nothing specific was pointed out, for the life of me, I don?t see anything wrong; but what do I know?
With the outbreak of WWII in 1939 the Gestapo closed down Bonhoeffer?s seminary; nonetheless, Bonhoeffer and the others continued their work, in public view, until they were arrested in 1943, and sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
In June or July of 2003, I found a picture drawn on my examining room table. It consisted of parallel pictures--two in number. Each showed, in graphic detail, a human heart, each, with a dagger plunged through it. From the tip of each exiting blade, there were drops of blood---appropriately colored red--dripping onto a typical six-pointed star, similar to that seen on synagogues and on the Israeli flag. It was immediately labeled “a death threat” by a custody captain. The person who did it publicly volunteered that fact. That person was not an inmate. Despite a pending investigation, this person was promoted.
Bonhoeffer was a poet as well. He spoke of imprisonment that made it a palpable reality. Chuch Colson, one of President Nixon's henchman who did time in a federal penitentiary said, of Bonhoeffer’s poems: “When I was in prison, no writings encouraged me more than Bonhoeffer’s.”
The Chief Medical Officer has, on the record, during an investigation, denied everything that I swore was said in conversations over the past year and a half. It might remotely be considered a difference in recollection of events--except for the simple fact that I kept a daily diary and have done so for the past four years. Detailed conversations---including verbatim quotes?were totally contradicted. So clearly, either the CMO has a photographic memory matched only by my perjurous imagination, or there is a simpler explanation. And granting his integrity, I cannot imagine what that would be. Equally as miraculous was the disappearance of my diary from a desk in the hospital during a five-minute interval.
Here is an excerpt from perhaps Bonhoeffer’s most famous poem, “Who Am I.” His reaction is indistinguishable from that of any inmate, anywhere, and at any time:
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?”
On October 18th there will be a State Personnel Board Hearing at Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran California. I do not regret one second of care and attention I have given the inmates. I wish I had it all to do over, so I could do it exactly the same way again. I may not comprehend much, but for the first time, I understand why I admire Bonhoeffer so very much.
In 1945, as the war was ending, these men---the Flossenberg Martyrs, including Bonhoeffer?were executed.
I don’t come up to his knees. He puts me to shame.
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