Beauty in the Depths of Night: A Tail of Dachau
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters 3 and God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.” (Gen. 1:1-3 RSV.)
The painted pages of history are formed with a variety
of colors, some dark and evil, others beautiful and bright. The colorful pages
of history can also be glimpsed from a diversity of lenses. One can seek out
the individual stories of history, the beautiful or diabolical interactions of
everyday humans; others choose to see history through a wider lenses which
captures the larger movements of its ever changing canvas. The eyes of faith
help us glimpse history with a truly unique perspective. Scripture shows us that there are deeper
realities at work in both lives of those who fill the pages off history and its
greater movements. Metaphorically, Genesis depicts the characters of history.
The Father of lights, Unmoved Creator of all, who breathes life into the
darkness, the creatures of this Creator — humans and angels, fallen, loyal, and
endowed with free will — all enter into the epic masterpiece of this historical
saga. The struggle between deep darkness and radiant light, true good and real
evil is the deeper reality of history which the Scriptures teach us. This epic
struggle finds its pinnacle in the figure of Christ, the suffering servant and
true son of the Father of lights who “like us in all but sin” (Heb. 4:15 RSV)
took on the suffering of men and gained our salvation thought His death and
resurrection. Christ is the one of whom St. John reminds us that “in him was
life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and
the darkness has not overcome it.” (Jn. 1:4-5 RSV.)
Dachau, the first of the Nazi concentration camps, opened
in 1933[1], shortly after Hitler’s
rise to power. Beginning first as camp for political prisoners it would soon
develop into to a full-fledged concentration camp. Although it never held the
title of “death camp” because the gas chamber installed in 1942[2] was never used, over the
course of its operation an estimated quarter of the more than two hundred
thousand prisoners which passed through Dachau’s gates were brutally murdered
through starvation, beatings, over work, firing squads, medical experiments and
lethal injection. Dachau and its rule of brutality would become both a model
for other concentration camps and training ground for SS solders. As father Bernard
describes in his memoir, Priestblock
25487, the block housed an estimated 2,771[3] clergymen who were not
spared of the violent law that ruled the camp. Upon his arrival he describes
his first encounter with Dachau’s brutality
“On May 19, at four in the afternoon, the train arrives at the Dachau station. I am the last to get off. “Well, the Lord be praised,” exclaims a huge SS man, who is on the platform to take charge of the prisoner transport. “For ever and ever, amen,” I reply without a trace of sarcasm. People stop in their tracks. They start to laugh, pleased to see an SS man get his comeuppance. But as soon as I look into his vicious face, I regret my response. It would come within an inch of costing me my life.”[4]
This remark would earn him a slap in the face from
every SS he was passed to that day. The SS solder Klaxon whom he made the
remark to would continue to torment him.
“The man with the egg coddler, come forward!” I recognize the voice instantly. The witty remark is a reference to my clerical hat. “Here!” I call out, as loudly as I can. “Get down!” As soon as my legs are dangling over the edge of the straw mattress, he grabs me and yanks me down violently past the lower bunks. “Are you the parson with the egg coddler?” “Yes,” I answer, as I try to pull myself together. At once someone jabs me in the ribs and says, “Here you say, ‘Sir, yes, sir!’” “Sir, yes, sir!” “Priests are filthy swine! —What are you?” Do the drill, I think. On the outside, like an old camp hand... Nobody can take away what’s inside you. “A filthy swine, sir!” I bellow at the top of my lungs. That impresses him. Maybe he wasn’t expecting it. “Carry on!” —Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The danger is past. As I crawl under the blanket again, I tell my bunkmate the story of the-Lord-be-praised incident. “He’s out to get you,” he says. “We call him ‘B.B.’ It stands for ‘blond beast.’” After that, I fell for the first time into the kind of deep sleep that exists only in Dachau.”[5]
On another occasion Father Bernard is told of the
torture inflicted the previous year for Good Friday
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Photo in 1965 Dachau Museum
The photograph above, taken inside the old Dachau Museum
in May 2001, shows a fake hanging scene at
Buchenwald that was created in 1958 for an East German DEFA film. Source: “Catholic priests in the Dachau
concentration camp” scrapbookpages.com. Accessed March 12, 2015.
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/KZDachau/DachauLife3.html.
|
“—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.”…They threatened us with it for months. Lent was awful. We hardly dared to breathe, so we wouldn't give them even the slightest excuse. Several of the priests who were hung up last year never recovered and died. If you don’t have a strong heart, you don’t survive it. Many have a permanently crippled hand.”[6]
Torture of the prisoners seems to be how both SS
guards and Capos (Prisoners who help run the camp. Some of them almost as bad
as the guards)[7]
enjoyed their time. Father Bernard describes the absurd regulations and daily
activities. The prisoners were forced to learn pointless songs, make their
straw mattresses perfectly square, and keep their rooms spotlessly clean.
Failure in any of these activities could result in severe beatings. The
prisoners would often be forced to stand for hours in the cold or exercise to
the point of exhaustion or even death. The priests’ particular nightmare was
the snow cleanup duty to which they were assigned. Father Bernard describes the
mad circus that took place even if the snow would be soon melted by the sun.
“The thermometer hovered between 5 and 15 degrees below zero. From morning till night we scraped, shoveled, and pushed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of snow to the brook. The work detail consisted of more than 1,000 clergymen, forced to keep moving by SS men and Capos who kicked us and beat us with truncheons. We had to make rounds with the wheelbarrows from the assembly square to the brook and back. Not a moment of rest was allowed, and much of the time we were forced to run. At one point I tripped over my barrow and fell, and it took me a while to get up again. An SS man dashed over and ordered me to run with the full load. He ran beside me, beating me constantly with a leather strap. When I got to the brook I was not allowed to dump out the heavy snow, but had to make a second complete round with it instead. When the guard finally went off and I tried to let go of the wheelbarrow, I found that one of my hands was frozen fast to it. I had to blow on it with my warm breath to get it free.”[8]
According to Father Bernard’s memoirs, because of
pressure from the German bishops and the Vatican, the clergy at first received better
treatment and privileges such as a nap, time to pray, and wine. The
“privileges” used to make the other prisoners hate the clergy were in reality
transformed into new tortures for the clergy.
“The officer walks around and inspects the cups, to make sure they are evenly filled and that no one gets off easy. “Drink up, you stinking padres!” The SS man jumps up on a stool and watches us all like a hawk. Not everyone is capable of drinking a quarter-liter of wine in one gulp. As soon as our cups are empty we have to hold them upside down above our heads. One prisoner chokes out of nervousness and falls behind. In a flash the SS man is on him and slams his fist into the bottom of the cup so violently that the metal rim slices a semi-circle through his lips and cheeks, all the way down to the bone. The man is bleeding so badly he has to go to the infirmary.”[9]
“Add a few insults to the Pope and the Church, lard the whole liberally with “clergy scum” and “pack of priests,” and you have a rough approximation of the context in which the only message that really mattered appeared: “The privileges you’ve had up to now are over.”[10]
During Easter week of 1942, after the Vatican radio
broadcast a critical report of Dachau, Father Bernard explains the retaliation
punishment that was inflicted on the priest under a false pretext,
“One of you bastards was hiding foreign currency, and it was found! As a punishment everything in blocks 28 and 30 will be thrown outside twice a day for the next week. Twice a day you will put it back in perfect order, everything cleaned off, and the beds remade. You will dust and sweep until not one piece of straw is visible on the street. There will be no food until evening, and then only after the clerk has made a personal inspection.”[11]
Hunger and starvation were another constant in Dachau.
Father Bernard relates how later in his time at the camp the clergy were forced
to work without an extra work ration on the plantation — a stark marsh which
they were forced to cultivate into a growing field. During this time many
priests would risk beatings or death to eat beans or plants that they would
find. He relates strikingly how he and his fellow brothers eyed a dandelion for
several days which graced their marching path.
“I have sworn that the plant will be mine. One day when the capo is on the other side of the column and I myself am at the far right end of a row, I throw my cap on the flower in a split second as we go past, dash out of formation and retrieve my cap. I pull up the plant with it and put them both on my head.”[12]
On another occasion he shares how one of the camp
capos, while
discarding some leek seedlings, noticed the priests’ longing glances and proceeded
to urinate on the “food” “That’s so you’ll lose your appetites,” he said. He
was mistaken, however. I learned on this occasion that some of my fellows were
even hungrier than I was...”[13]
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| Polish prisoners in Dachau toast their liberation from the camp |
One of the most striking examples of brotherhood is
found in the friendship of Father Bernard and Father Batty Esch. In his memoir
father Bernard depicts a moving moments when he reprimands Batty Esch for being
so negative and unhopeful,
"I was exhausted and close to despair. I meant what I had said, every word of it. I was too miserable to express my thoughts less baldly, with more consideration for his feelings. “So I’m all alone now,” said Batty Esch. I said nothing. We both sensed how a wall was descending and dividing us. Unavoidably, since we hadn’t the strength to surmount it. I can truly say that, psychologically and emotionally, this moment was one of the hardest I experienced in all my time at the camp. Neither of us was able to sleep. I wept, and I believe he did the same. Was it minutes or hours that went by like this? Then suddenly, after an involuntary movement, he was holding my hand in his. He gripped it firmly, and I returned the pressure. “Let’s stick together!” Batty whispered. “Yes,” was all I said? And then we fell asleep, happy."[14]
Their selfless mutual friendship, which continued
through father Bernard’s time at Dachau, is a stunning testament to Christ words “greater love has no
man then this, than to lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn. 13)
Another moving
example of brotherhood found in the actions of the Priest of Dachau is the way
in which the German priests would risk their lives to smuggle the Eucharist to
their brothers. On Christmas day 1941 Father Bernard relates,
“I set mine down next to Cappy, and as he bends down to pick it up he quickly presses a carefully folded piece of paper into my hand. Very softly he mouths the word “ichthys.” I have difficulty concealing my excitement. Swiftly I hide the precious gift in my glove. And as I hurry back home images from the time of the catacombs come to mind. Back then, as now, the Most Holy had to be preserved from desecration, and so the Greek term for “fish,” ichthys, became a code word for the Eucharist…After the evening meal we Luxembourgers met a few friends inconspicuously in the darkness outside the barrack and divided the precious pieces into as many particles as humanly possible. And then the Christ Child entered our hearts...”[15]
Priestblock
25487 is filled with many moments of priests risking their lives to
illegally pray together, hear confession and give last rights. Father Bernard
depicts a beautiful moment in the infirmary when his bed mate gently passes
away,
“Do
we get the same ration as outside?” I ask. My neighbor doesn’t answer. He is
dead. Cautiously I turn his head toward me and swiftly and secretly perform my
priestly office. In the few hours we had spent together, I had made the
acquaintance of a saint.”[16]
In another striking moment off selflessness, Father
Bernard explains why he would secretly wash out his friends blankets,
“Since arriving in the infirmary Batty Esch had suffered from a form of diarrhea resembling dysentery. It was paramount to conceal it, for men with this ailment were labeled with an unvarnished term and moved immediately to room 4, where no one paid any more attention to their condition. If someone could no longer stand up, he just remained lying in his excrement until death released him.”[17]
Over the course of its existence some 600[18] priests would die in the horrors
of the Dachau camp. Many of these men died as unknown saints; others such as
Bl. Titus Brandsma- a
Carmelite cleric, philosopher, writer, teacher, historian and avowed anti-Nazi-
and Bl. Michal Kozal -a Polish priest, who, for two years, attended to the
spiritual needs of his fellow prisoners- would be officially beatified by the
Church.
“In the midst of his illness and his own inner feelings of despair and self-pity, Karl was still able to help others; he visited the sick and secretly prayed with them. He arranged for priests to sneak into the infirmary to hear confessions and distribute Holy Communion.”[20]
On December 17, 1944 Karl was secretly ordained by the
French bishop, Gabriel Pignet. More than a thousand priests crammed into the
chapel for to witness moving sacrament. He would celebrate his first and mass
on December 26. Amidst the horrors that were around Bl. Karl Leisner was truly
a brilliant light.[21]
The Nazi reign of terror was truly one of the darkest
moments of our most recent history. Father Jean Bernard’s Memoir is a very real
testament to the deep evil that we must guard and fight against in our future,
but the beautiful and heroic stories from the Priestblock 25487 also remind us of a very deep truth. No matter
how deep evil grows it cannot overcome the light, for “in him was life, and the life was the
light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not
overcome it.” (Jn. 1:4-5 RSV.)
For darkness has not the power to overcome it!
For darkness has not the power to overcome it!
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| Catholic cross in front of Dachau service building, 1945 the papal flag was flown over the barracks of the priests on the day that Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945. That night, the Polish priests erected a huge wooden cross on the roll call square in front of the administration building that is now a Museum at Dachau. Source:“Catholic priests in the Dachau concentration camp” scrapbookpages.com. Accessed March 12, 2015. http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/KZDachau/DachauLife3.html |
