Where Sin Abounds, Grace Abounds All the More

Main entrance to Dachau with the words
"Arbeit macht frei"- "Work will liberate" 1945

“Work Will Liberate”

The words above were the words written at the entrance gate of the famous concentration camp in Germany known as Dachau. These words were faced by thousands of men as well as some women upon their entrance to a place of diabolical persecution; a cold, terrible, dark hellhole. The truths behind this place are both stomach-turning and heart-wrenching. One may ask, how is it that any man could have emerged alive from such a terrible place? The reality is that many men did not make it. But the answer for those who did is this: hope remained, Divine Providence was at work, and love, deep faith, and forgiveness permeated the camp grounds and gave those men courage and strength. 

The year was 1933. Dachau Concentration Camp opened in Bavaria, Germany and became the first Nazi concentration camp for political prisoners. Reich Interior Minister Frick came up with the idea “education through work” and this became the motto at the camp.  (Marcuse, 20) The idea was to have the prisoners come to terms with discipline, to suppress opposition of Hitler, and to, through hard labor and exercise (marching, running), through punishments in which prisoners would be ordered to stand in one spot for hours on end, through the undergoing of laboratory experiments, through undergoing diabolical wickedness, lose their identity and not forget the "power" of Hitler and the "weakness" of the Church. Traitors, or enemies of Hitler, were taken to Dachau for imprisonment (Rychlak, 90). But we do not focus on the word “traitor” or “enemies” when we read the stories of these men; rather, what we recognize is that many of these courageous heroes were living saints.

Saints indeed. In the preface of Fr. Jean Bernard’s book Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau, Sean Cardinal O’Malley, O.F.M., Cap. Archbishop of Boston writes: “Over 2,000 Catholic Priests became prisoners of one of Hitler’s earliest concentration camps, Dachau in Bavaria, Germany. These saintly men of pastoral charity are icons of the suffering servant in their zeal for souls. The priests of Dachau were sentenced to the barracks which became known as the Priestblock.”  (Bernard, xi)

Inmates of Dachau during lineup, 1933

In his book, Fr. Bernard, the 25,487th prisoner of the camp, makes the point that Jews were not the only ones persecuted under Hitler’s power and the Nazi regime. On the contrary, Catholics and so many others experienced what was known as the nightmare of Nazism. The persecution of Catholic priests was one of the most predominant persecutions of that time. Robert Royal writes in the Introduction to Priestblock 25487, "People who have not looked carefully at the position of the Catholic Church under the Third Reich may be surprised... The Nazis did not want to exterminate all Catholics, but they did most certainly want to exterminate all Jews, and they nearly succeeded... Yet it is a fact of history that millions of Catholics were murdered in the Nazi camps, and that is something we must never forget." (Bernard, xiv) Along with many other men considered "political enemies" of Hitler, priests gave their lives; along with many other men, priests sacrificed their very selves and gave all they had for God, doing what they could to be witnesses of Christ, bringing hope to those around them.

Hope was desperately needed in such terrible and dark times. A small number of men could see that "light at the end of the tunnel," but many could not. For those who could hold onto hope, the memories of the camp still would come back to haunt them. Fr. Gereon Karl Goldman, O.F.M. writes of his own experience in Dachau. His perspective was different from most priests' during that time. Fr. Goldman was not imprisoned there; he traveled there as a Catholic priest, yes, and he showed resistance against Hitler most definitely, but he went to Dachau as a German member of the SS. His story, which he tells of in his book The Shadow of His Wings, is remarkable. He relates a story of a conversation he once had with other SS soldiers who were insisting that the members of the Church were criminals and the Fuhrer was smart for their approach to these "criminals." Fr. Goldman, a sergeant-major who merely wished to "announce the Christian message" and celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, was then threatened by the leader of the group to be treated as an enemy of Hitler if he would not promise to be more careful about what he said about his Faith and against Hitler on "German soil," for if he was not careful he would be no different from any other "irreconcilable enemy" of Hitler (Rychlak, 146). Fr. Goldman writes, "I asked him... if he had ever heard of Dachau... I said I was there and said I could tell him exactly how things fared with those who were marked as enemies of Germany. I told them, holding nothing back, of my trip to that hellhole. They turned pale and became speechless..." (Goldman, 192)

Fr. Goldman knew what Dachau was like. He knew that the prisoners behind barbed wire were running out of hope. He wanted to bring hope through the Mass and the Eucharist. Before October of 1941, religious acts were accepted and Catholic priests were given special privileges; Mass could be said at the camp, priests were given wine daily and the amount of food was sufficient, for the Pope "arranged through diplomatic channels for the clergy to be given special treatment." (Bernard, 35) But in October of 1941 all of that changed. Possibly due to a speech given on Vatican Radio which spoke out against Hitler, the "special privileges" were lost and religious acts became strictly prohibited. Daily punishment became greater than ever before and the punishments to be faced were horrible. Men at Dachau feared for another experience like that which occurred on Good Friday, 1940. Fr. Bernard explains:

En route I ask the man next to me, "What did our room head mean with his remark about Good Friday?"

"He meant  'the worst is over.' --On Good Friday last year the SS found some pretext to punish 60 priests with an hour on 'the tree.' That is the mildest camp punishment. They tie a man's hands together behind his back, palms facing out and fingers pointing backward. Then they turn his hands inwards, tie a chain around his wrists and hoist him up by it. His own weight twists his joints and pulls them apart... several of the priests who were hung up last year never recovered and died. If you don't have a strong heart, you don' survive it." (28)

Dachau prisoner barracks- 1945

The weak, the ill, the frail-- they often did not survive. You see, at Dachau, men were treated as lab rats, made to endure terrible and inhumane experiments. They were starved to death. They worked so hard and stood for so many hours that their feet would become raw and their socks and shoes would be drenched in blood. Jews, Poles, political enemies, priests-- they suffered tremendously. Ronald J. Rychlak, in his book Hitler, the War, and the Pope, writes: "Polish Catholic clergy strongly resisted the Nazis, and they suffered greatly for it. In 1940, the Germans decided to put all priests from the concentration camp into one location where they could be tightly controlled. They were kept together in Dachau barracks...These barracks were ringed with a barbed-wire fence, which restricted the ability of priests to minister to other prisoners during their few free hours." (Rychlak, 194)

Dachau prisoner undergoing experiments

Barbed-wire fence
at Dachau

Rychlak continues, "These Dachau priests worked in the enormous S.S. industrial complex...but the Nazis had other uses for them as well. Some were injected with pus so that Nazi doctors could study gangrene; others had their body temperature lowered to study resuscitation of German fliers downed in the North Atlantic; one priest was crowned with barbed wire and a group of Jewish prisoners were forced to spit on him. Father Stanislaus Bednarski, a Pole, was hanged on a cross. In November 1944, three priests were executed "not because they were criminals," as one judge stated, "but because it was their tragedy that they were Catholic priests.""(Rychlak, 194)

Crematorium at the Dachau Camp

The prisoners of Dachau were so severely starved that they would eat anything they thought was edible, even if it came from compost bins. Fr. Bernard writes of a man who ate Couteline because he insisted the fat in it would be good for him. Rychlak writes that "over two thousand [priests] died there from disease , starvation, and general brutality." (Rychlak, 194) Often the wounds on their feet, the edema in their legs, the psychological scars would be more than anyone could handle. The physical and psychological wounds often did not heal. How did any man survive? St. Francis of Assisi said: "If we endure things patiently and with gladness thinking on the sufferings of our blessed Lord, and bearing all for the love of Him: herein is perfect joy." It may have seemed impossible to some who lived through the war and may still seem impossible to many people now when looking at the horror and devastation which took place at the camp that "joy" could even have been a word spoken in the same sentence with the word "Dachau," but somehow, with the grace of God and the protection of Our Lady, some prisoners were able to have hope and joy and even love while in Dachau, for where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.

SS men and Hitler Youth viewing bodies of
prisoners in the Dachau death train

Bodies of prisoners who died
at Dachau

God poured out His grace and love on the men at the Dachau camp. In Priestblock 25487 we see Fr. Jean Bernard's living witness of this love. At Dachau, Fr. Bernard began to understand Sadism. He experienced first-hand the horror and the pain of Dachau. But he never gave up hope. While Mass was still permitted, he said that receiving the Eucharist was "a sea of comfort that pours out over the gathering. Comfort and hope and strength for new suffering joyfully accepted." (p. 41) He writes, "I look at the two bits of Host in my hand, and as the One for Whom we are suffering all this comes into our midst, as in their hearts hundreds of priests join their offering with that of the Savior, tears roll down my cheeks. It becomes a single offering that certainly creates new ties between heaven and earth." (p. 40)

When the privileges, including the opportunity for participating in Holy Mass, were lost, Fr. Bernard still kept up his courage. He even did what he could to bring others hope for he knew that any negative or bleak sort of attitude would be destructive for both him and everyone. He did come close to despair and despondency a number of times, but any chance he could get he would cling to the hope from positive rumors which he would hear. In response to negativity, he would say things like, "We want to cling to every straw! Every bit of hope is welcome, if it helps me to keep going and feel strong inside, even if the image is a false one, a mirage." (Bernard, 70) He would go to sleep happy, with hope and the knowledge of having fellow prisoners staying close to him and keeping hope and trust on God. When their feet would be bleeding and their legs would be full of wound and would swell and when they would make the same rounds morning after morning and work to beyond the point of exhaustion and debilitation, prisoners would weep and state that it was "impossible" or "too late." But Fr. Bernard would not want to admit it. For him, with God, nothing was impossible. He was ready for sacrifice and suffering, but he never lost hope: "And I recited to the Lord the long list of convictions for which I was willing to sacrifice my life for Him." (Bernard, 156) When he thought of how someone was out there working on his release, he was given hope. When he thought of God and his home in Luxembourg and his family he had renewed courage, even when he was close to death. When he would be near others who died, he would administer his priestly blessings and carry out any duty he was still able to do. He was a channel of grace to others, clinging to hope all the time.

The full horror of Dachau cannot be described in words. I am not able to do complete justice in describing all of the terrible things that went on there. I did not know the men who died there or the men who survived. But I do know that we can all learn from them. We can recognize their bravery, their love for God, their willingness to sacrifice. Many men at Dachau bore all things for Christ, for they realized that God makes a man free; work does not. Some prisoners were able to remain strong by receiving the grace God was sending down to them, grace which allowed them to love and to forgive others. 

Dachau survivors

Fr. Bernard writes in his Foreward of Priestblock 25487 that we must never forget what happened at Dachau. He says that "[f]orgetting would be cowardice on the part of the people in whose name all these crimes were committed." He says, "Wanting to forget would also be weakness on the part of those who suffered. It would mean that though they could endure suffering courageously, they now lack the inner strength to reflect on what they endured and to assess what it means for their own lives... And finally, it would be turning a blind eye to similar events taking place today..." (Bernard, xx) Br. Bernard does not end there, however. He writes further, "Yet we must forgive... above all for the sake of Him Who commands and urges us to forgive, and before Whom we, victims and executioners alike, are all poor debtors in need of mercy." 

Survivors of Dachau- 1945

We do learn forgiveness from many of these men. We see their pain most definitely, but we see something more from men like Fr. Bernard. We see their love and their patience and their courageousness during their daily maltreatment at Dachau. We see how some of them clung to even the smallest ounce of hope in the most difficult times. From some, we see their positive outlook and their joy at the prospect of bearing anything for Christ. We see how some of them were able to forgive by the grace of God. We learn from these men what we can do in times of persecution today, in times where sin seems to abound more than ever before. Many of these men were living saints, who "model virtues and lives of faith." (Bernard, xii) We have before us the heroic witness of men who give us hope and through whom we see how grace abounded. These men are not forgotten. They will never be forgotten.

Christ Opens the Gate of Dachau

Works Cited:

Bernard, O.F.M., Jean. Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau. MD: Zaccheus Press, 2007. Print.

Goldman, O.F.M., Gereon Karl. The Shadow of His Wings. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000. Print.

Marcuse, Harold. Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933-2001. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.

Rychlak, Ronald J. Hitler, the War, and the Pope. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2010. Print.

Note: All photographs used in this post were taken from the internet.