Dachau, The Priestblock, & The Path Sainthood -

History has always been an interest of mine, specifically World War II while I was growing up. I don’t know what it was about the war that really intrigued me, maybe it was simply the idea that one person could be the mastermind behind so much destruction and hatred. It was not until later in high school that I actually began looking into the war seriously. As a result I began discovering many ties from the atrocities of the war that still haunt our world today, such as the euthanasia, and experimentations on those deemed unfit to carry on a life of their own. This whole scientific part of the war was news to me, my initial understanding was that it was an attempt to wipe out the Jews – it was a war focused on abolishing a religion…. Little did I know that it was a war with many layers and somewhere along the lines Catholics were targeted.

If you haven’t already read it I recommend Priestblock 25487 – by Father Jean Bernard. It is his personal memoir of the horrors that took place within the Dachau concentration camp. It was an intense read, there were points where I couldn’t help but comfort myself with the thought that this was historical fiction, written in first person, like many other war stories I have read. In reality however, everything within the book actually occurred, and was experienced by the author, a Catholic priest. I think my shrugging it off into the genre of historical fiction was my way of coping; I had trouble accepting the fact that some of these events actually took place.

The way the prisoners were treated was rather mindboggling to me. Yes, I knew there were horrible things that happened in the concentration camps but sometimes their everyday life… I don’t know how they put up with everything. There was very little space; the camp was designed to hold 6,000 prisoners, and by 1944 the camp actually held 30,000 people as prisoners.[1] Fr. Bernard writes of the close quarters, sharing beds with at least one, as well as not having enough mattresses for everyone to use resulting in people sleeping between the pushed together beds or on the bed-slats (on which the mattress would typically rest), and having the entire residency of three of the barrack buildings moved into the few others that remained in the priestblock that were already brimming with people. They did this to make room for a group of about 300 Russians, who were only there for about six weeks and then never seen again.[2]

Throughout these difficult times the priests were assigned to work that included carrying the soup pails from the kitchen to the different barracks, shoveling snow (even if it was only a light dusting and the sun was going to melt it quickly), carrying it from where it had fallen to the edge of the camp and sometimes only placing it down when given permission by the SS officer watching.[3] The priests specifically came to work in different storage places, or fields, it was a lot of manual labor, that was made difficult by their poor diets as well as their insufficient wardrobe.

Dachau was the first concentration camp. It was not a death camp because there was no gas chamber until 1942, and after the chamber was built it was never put to any kind of use.[4] The camp is known for several things, including its insane forced labor program, with the saying above the gate that translates to “Work sets you free”[5] as well as it being considered a “model concentration camp, a place where S.S. guards and other camp officials went to train.”[6] Father Bernard writes of a time when the camp received visitors, almost as though they were inspecting the camp. He explains that there was a specific protocol which the camp underwent so that people would believe Dachau to be a humane place, this included a specific building being kept up better than the others, and a handful of better fed prisoners wandering around, while the workers, and the remaining prisoners either remained in their barracks or outside of the gates until the guests left.[7]

The Sign above the Gate
"Work sets you free."

The manipulation that went into maintaining such an inhumane place surprised me. The fact that anywhere could actually reach such a level of inhumanity really astounds me. The tasks that the prisoners were assigned ended up being games for the officers of the camp to feel as though they had some kind of power. They made the prisoners their puppets, while in reality they, the officers, were the puppets of the Third Reich, with their strings being pulled by Hitler. We cannot actually look at this situation and come to the conclusion that there was not some greater evil taking control during this war. Despite the evil that took place, God still got the last word, as He always does, and at least two priests from Dachau were beatified by Saint John Paul II.[8] The first of these men was Father Titus Brandsma.

Father Titus Brandsma

Father Brandsma, a priest in the Carmelite order, was a professor in the Netherlands. He spoke out against Hitler and the Nazi party from the beginning, and quickly became a target. As the war moved farther along and the media, i.e. the newspaper articles, became more censored. Father Brandsma was asked by the bishop to assist the Dutch Catholic Journalists with identifying what was or was not appropriate in being cut from the papers from a Catholic perspective. He traveled from city to city, while being followed by the military, visiting the editors and before he would leave he would remind them -

“We have reached our limit. We cannot serve them. It will be our duty to refuse Nazi propaganda definitely if we wish to remain Catholic newspapers. Even if they threaten us with severe penalties, suspension or discontinuance of our newspapers, we cannot conform with their orders.”[9]

It was not long before the Nazis figured out what Father Brandsma was doing, and he was quickly arrested in January of 1942. He was sent to two different camps before finally finding himself at Dachau, where he was told he would remain until the end of the war. He was sent to the priestblock, where he participated in work, like that described by Father Bernard and he quickly fell ill. Upon entering the infirmary medical experimentation began and on July 26^th, 1942 he was injected with lethal drug and quickly died.[10]

The second priest who came to be beatified by Saint John Paul II was actually the Polish Bishop that Father Bernard wrote about, Bishop Cozal[11] (Kozal – depending on the translation). On June 12, 1939, Father Cozal was made Auxiliary bishop of Wloclawek by Pope Pius XII, he was consecrated on August 13, 1939, and on September 1, 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland. Rather than leave Poland and head to safety the Bishop chose to stay with his people and on November 7, he was arrested by the Nazis and was held in Wloclawek's city prison. After being transferred to two different prisons and a failed attempt by the Vatican to rescue the Bishop, he was sent to Dachau in April of 1941. He lived in the priestblock where he took part in the forced labor, and was given the opportunity to offer the sacrifice of the mass "to celebrate his twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination."[12] It was not until January of 1943 that Bishop Cozal was injected with a lethal substance and after death incinerated.[13]

Bishop Cozal

Despite the evils and the horrors experienced within the camp two men came to find themselves on the path toward sainthood. It is known for a fact that both Blesseds were at Dachau while Father Bernard was there. We only know however that Father Bernard interacted with Bishop Cozal, as he mentions him by name in his memoir; it is not known whether he ever knew Father Brandsma, though they were at the camp at the same time, and quite possibly at the infirmary simultaneously.

The fact that even in the darkest of times, even in a camp filled with torture, pain, and death, men like Blessed Bishop Cozal, Blessed Father Brandsma, and Father Bernard could lead others to see Christ is incredibly amazing. It should cause us to remember that despite our sufferings, and our difficulties things could be so much worse. I am not saying that our problems are irrelevant and unimportant; I am merely saying that the stories of these three men should allow us to call to mind a kind of clarity of perspective. Despite our struggles, if they, three men over worked, underfed, poorly clothed, and tortured, could keep their faith, we have no excuse, and I know for me, sometimes I need that reminder desperately.

The long and short of it comes down to this – Yes, world war II was filled with many horrors, and many deaths, but outside of all of the pain and the suffering one can find God waiting to comfort, and that is a beautiful thing. If you ever get the opportunity to read Father Bernard’s Priestblock 25487, do so. You will not regret it. It is one of the most interesting books I have read in a while, and the fact that he experienced so much, but held fast to his faith is just amazing. It is one of those books that you just have to read for yourself.

Resources –

Gloss, Jennifer L. “Dachau.” Accessed October 15, 2014.http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/Dachau.htm.

History.com Staff. “Dachau.” History.com. 2009. Accessed October 15, 2014.http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/dachau.

Bernard, Jean. Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau. Bethesda, Md.: Zaccheus Press, ©2007.

“Titus Brandsma 1881 - 1942.” Accessed October 17, 2014.http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/TITUSLIF.htm.

“Blessed Michal Kozal.” Accessed October 17, 2014. http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=7534

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[1] History.com Staff, “Dachau,” History.com, 2009, accessed October 15, 2014, http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/dachau.

[2] Jean Bernard, Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau (Bethesda, Md.: Zaccheus Press, ©2007),  76.

[3] Jean Bernard, Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau (Bethesda, Md.: Zaccheus Press, ©2007), 61.

[4] Jennifer L. Gloss, “Dachau,”, accessed October 15, 2014,http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/Dachau.htm.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Jean Bernard, Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau (Bethesda, Md.: Zaccheus Press, ©2007), 132 – 134.

[8] History.com Staff, “Dachau,” History.com, 2009, accessed October 15, 2014, http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/dachau.

[9] “Titus Brandsma 1881 - 1942,”, accessed October 17, 2014,http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/TITUSLIF.htm.

[10] Ibid.

[11]Jean Bernard, Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau (Bethesda, Md.: Zaccheus Press, ©2007),  49.

[12] Ibid.

[13] “Blessed Michal Kozal,”, accessed October 17, 2014, http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=7534.

Satan Chokes the Spiritual Throats of Man

Temptation of Jesus in the Desert

(Photo Source Here)

Satan impregnated Germany with his seed to breed an incomprehensible evil within the world. Hitler and his Nazis not only sought to annihilate millions of human lives, but diabolically they sought to demolish men’s spirits. The holocaust consisted of more than an extermination of biological life. Nazis ferociously ripped through the hearts and souls of men, hoping to extinguish the spiritual flame prior to the final death blow. For this reason, the Catholic Church was a formidable foe. She not only harbored peoples to save them from execution, for which She had a limited capacity, but also She radiated consoling words and prayers whose boundless reach sustained countless souls suffering throughout all of Europe. The Germans were well aware of how quickly scattered embers could ignite into an engulfing, spiritual inferno.

Christianity was a clear threat to Nazism, in spite of some German Christians who joined the Third Reich. Truly, these Christians were replacing their faith in Christ for a new faith in German Nationalism. There was a blatant attempt to discredit the Church by trumping up charges of criminality and immorality against priests all over Europe. Propaganda and faulty ideas were the Nazis most powerful weapons, despite their advanced weapons technology. This is one reason psychological torture was part and parcel of their concentration camps. Even within the camps, they wanted to pit the lay population against those dwelling in the priestblock. The clergy didn’t have the same work details that the rest of the prisoners had to endure. Also, priests had “wine detail,” in which they were forced to chug wine in a limited amount of time so as to intoxicate them, promoting an illusion of special treatment to the rest of the prisoners. Fr. Bernard writes in Priestblock the explanation he was given by a fellow prisoner concerning the clergy’s “special” treatment: “The idea is to make the other prisoners hate them and keep them morally isolated as well.” Therefore, men of faith were considered dangerous, and simply imprisoning them wasn’t enough to diminish their influence. They recognized that ideas and spirituality could survive and spread beyond an individual man’s mortal lifespan. The aggression imposed by Nazi Germany was indeed as much a spiritual battle as it was a corporeal battle.

Dachau came to house 2,670 priests, who were separated from the rest of the prison population “as a way of keeping them together and thereby preventing them from ‘infecting’ other prison populations with Christianity.” The S.S. knew how contagious hope can be and how it could undermine their attempts to diminish the spirit of men. Clearly, the clergy in Dachau were faced with the awful truth of Matthew 10:28, “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” Nazis were not only agents of evil in ending the mortal life, but they also sought to corrupt man’s soul, forcing him to tangle with the absurdity of cruelty. Within the first two weeks of being at Dachau, Fr. Jean Bernard writes after witnessing an older man beaten to a pulp for not singing the songs correctly, “All at once a terrible rage gripped me. I wanted to leap at the man’s throat, but I lacked the courage. Or was it my reason that won out? I threw my head back and stared at the monster in uncomprehending confusion. It was an encounter with an utterly alien demonic world. Suddenly i understood what sadism was.” Evil can be pernicious, infecting what begins as righteous anger and warping it into pure hatred, and even priests had to guard against it. Moreover, what gives intelligibility to existence is the order of creation, both physical and moral. Once that order is displace by arbitrariness, life takes on an absurdity, which can weed out all hope. The mind seeks patterns, attempting to make sense of surroundings, and when this ability is lost, madness ensues. For this reason, after a year in the camp Jean Bernard admits amidst cruelty from the guards at Dachau, “Gradually we break ourselves of the habit of thinking.”

Dachau Bunks

(Photo Credit Here)

Erich Fromm writes in The Art of Loving of sadism, “The ultimate degree of this attempt to know lies in the extremes of sadism, the desire and ability to make a human being suffer, to torture him, to force him to betray his secret in his suffering . . . [an officer in the Russian civil war once said,] ‘with shooting you only get rid of a chap . . . with shooting you’ll never get at the soul, to where it is in a fellow and how it shows itself. But I don’t spare myself, and I have more than once trampled an enemy for over an hour. You see, I want to get to know what life really is, what life’s like down our way.” From the testimony of this Russian offcier, we perceive that Sadism is very much a spiritual phenomenon, and only corporeal in the sense that the sadist attempts to break down the barriers to the soul. Sadism is what arose from the warped form of masculinity and militarism the Nazis promoted. Fr. Bernard recounts what he terms “snow sadism,” in which clergy had to scrape and remove snow in weather below zero degrees, sometimes using table tops hoisted on their backs, from morning until night without rest and without proper clothing. Throughout Priestblock, we witness senseless brutality that slowly degrades morals of even clergy. Fr. Bernard describes a scene in which a man slips down the stairs emptying the scalding pot of soup all over himself, incurring bad burns. He writes that while he looks away disturbed by the man’s pain,  a fellow priest responded in anger, “It’s one of the pails for us!” It is this precise moral deterioration and spiritual disorientation that the Nazis are seeking to achieve. After all, they must keep the prisoners from camaraderie, and keep them in survival mode—every man for himself. However, they weren’t entirely successful in their endeavor. Robert Royal writes in the introduction that throughout Priestblock there are episodes that “give us vivid and unforgettable indications of both the depths of depravity and heights of sanctity to which the human race is capable.”

Nazis didn’t want to be in the business of making martyrs, rather they wished to exterminate people only after attempts at crushing the spirit. The strength that Christians and Jews alike summoned from their faith was the best weapon they possessed in opposing their torturers. Jews understood suffering to be of value because they trusted in God’s enduring providential care. When Christ came, He introduced concrete meaning into suffering that previously had not been wholly ascertained within the context of salvation. For this reason, Fr. Jean Bernard writes, “The bishop’s blessing gives meaning to our suffering, lifts it above the purely human and joins our small, personal suffering to the sea of injury and persecution that the church of Christ endures and must endure. His blessing lets us share in the graces and comforts and sources of strength that fed the first martyrs. O miracle of the communion of saints, which becomes our experience here.” This is why the witness of Christianity throughout the holocaust is an important memory to keep alive. Suffering, especially when it culminates in martyrdom, is a supreme witness for people today who also encounter inescapable suffering. We witness the power of the Spirit when it is uplifted and sustained by Christ amidst even the most unimaginable atrocities. We see this iron Spirit in Fr. Bernard’s final words in the Foreward: “We must forgive while remaining conscious of the full horror of what occurred, not only because nothing constructive can be built on a foundation of hatred . . . but above all for the sake of Him who commands and urges us to forgive, and before home we, victims and executioners alike, are all poor debtors in need of mercy.” Ultimately, the Spirit of God triumphed over the vain pursuits of evil through Nazism to destroy His people. We must remember that in spite how bad the world may get or our personal lives may get, there is a very real spiritual battle that is ongoing until the end of time. It's there in history if you look for it, and it is present in our daily lives. So armor up!

St. Michael the Archangel, Defend Us in the Battle

(Photo Source Here)

Sources:

Ronald Rychlak. Hitler, the War, and the Pope. (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 2010).

Jean Bernard. Priestblock. (Bethesda, MD: Zaccheus Press, 2007)

Erich Fromm. The Art of Loving. (New York: Harper and Row. 1956)

Christopher Dillon. “‘Tolerance means weakness’: the Dachau Concentration Camp S. S., Militarism and            Masculinity.” Historical Research. May2013, Vol. 86 Issue 232, p373-389.