Great Faith Robed in Stripes

When I was fifteen I watched for the first time the HBO mini series, Band of Brothers (The series is excellent and I would recommend it to anyone interested in WWII). There is one episode in the mini series titled “Why We Fight” that shows the American soldiers discovering a Nazi camp and not knowing what it is. I remember silent tears streaming down my face as I watched the soldiers encounter the prisoners of the camp. It finally struck the soldiers that this this is why they were fighting. They were fighting against inhumanity and a godless ideology. 

Band of Brothers-Why We Fight -Clip from Band of Brothers showing the concentration camp discovery.

That godless ideology created many concentration camps that caused the death of thousands of people. “It was a hell before which Dante would stand mute.”¹ I don’t think a sentence has ever conveyed so much truth about the Nazi camps. There are two concentration camps which most people know about: Dachau and Auschwitz.  

Dachau watch tower and barracks

Dachau was the first concentration camp, and served as a model for the other camps to come.² Because it was the model for other concentration camps the training of SS concentration camp guards took place there. It wasn’t just SS guards who oversaw prisoners though, but fellow criminal prisoners called kapos who became trustees of the Nazi camp guards and commanders.³ Many kapos could be just as abusive as the SS guards. Although many of the prisoners at Dachau were Jews there were many other groups present, including Catholic clergy. 

As of 1940 almost all Catholic priests imprisoned in concentration camps had been moved to Dachau. The Vatican and German bishops had persuaded the Nazi officials to house all priests together, provide a chapel for them, and give them lighter work duties.⁴ The Nazis had slowly complied; however, the Nazis used the “softer” treatment of the clergy to alienate them from the other prisoners who then disdained the priests for their “elevated” position. There were originally three barracks set aside for clergy in Dachau: 26, 28, and 30. Built to house about 360 prisoners, the number rarely went below 1, 500 living in the barracks at a time.⁵ These barracks became known as the Priest Blocks. 

The true story of one such survivor of the Priest Blocks is that of Fr. Jean Bernard in his memoir titled Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau. Fr. Bernard was arrested in 1941 for uncertain reasons; however, the Nazis needed little proof to arrest anyone they felt threatened them. Priest Block at Dachau was where Fr. Bernard ended up. Although treated with cruelty and contempt by the SS guards and kapos for being a priest, Fr. Bernard showed amazing resilience and faith. He quickly caught on to the head games they played with the prisoners. One such incident at the beginning of his time at Dachau went as follows:

“‘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.”⁶

As a priest, Fr. Bernard’s duties were to carry the soup and coffee pails, rapidly shovel minuscule amounts of snow before the sun melted it, and work in the Dachau “Plantation.” Fr. Bernard also worked in the “Transport Commando Praezifix” which was work outside Dachau. One of the memorable scenes in Priestblock 25487 is when Fr. Bernard was assigned to the overseeing of the central heating in the basement of a villa. While in the basement a little girl living in the villa came to the top step of the basement, and she and Fr. Bernard held lively conversations together on different occasions. Fr. Bernard wrote that his interactions with the little girl helped him rediscover his faith in beauty and purity, and in innocence and love.⁷

Miraculously, in 1942 Fr. Bernard was released from Dachau. He spent a year recovering his health. Never one to back down, a healthier Fr. Bernard immediately took up work on films and media. Fr. Jean Bernard died in 1994 at 87 years old.⁸

Karl Leisner

Another amazing example of faith was the ordination of German deacon Karl Leisner to the priesthood in 1944 at Dachau. Leisner had been diagnosed with tuberculosis before his arrest, and suffered from it while in the Priest Block at Dachau. When ordained Leisner was seriously ill, with only nine months left of his life. Although very ill, Leisner was always joyful. He wrote after celebrating his first Mass, “‘After more than five years of prayer and waiting, days filled with very great happiness... That God could, through the intercession of Our Lady, answer our prayers in so gracious and unique a manner, I still cannot grasp.’”⁹ That Fr. Leisner could find happiness and beauty amidst such suffering is a testament not only to his character but to his remarkable faith in God. Fr. Leisner lived to see Dachau liberated, but died a few months later in August of 1945, a few weeks after celebrating his second and final Mass. Fr. Karl Leisner was proclaimed Blessed by Pope John Paul II on June 23, 1996.¹⁰ 

Both Fr. Bernard and Fr. Leisner received some of the most inhumane treatment while in the Priest Block. Besides the routine beatings and verbal abuses dispensed liberally by the SS guards and kapos, the priests were also punished more severely on Catholic holy days. There were crucifixions, where the hands were tied behind the back, palms facing out, then a chain strapped to the wrists and hung on a cross. Such was the punishment of 60 priests on Good Friday 1941.¹¹ Holy Week 1942 brought on asinine punishment duties that thoroughly exhausted the priests.

Fr. Bernard and Fr. Leisners’ experiences in Dachau were horrific, yet beautiful. The word beautiful might seem inappropriate, but to me it is not. Fr. Bernard, Fr. Leisner, and the other priests’ witness to their faith is a beautiful example of Christian discipleship. Jesus said in Matthew 16:24: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” The Nazis tried breaking their spirit and faith in God, but in a way their sufferings solidified it. The priests in Dachau kept close to Christ as best they could. Whether it was praying together, celebrating Mass for the first time, or partaking in Holy Communion on Christmas Day, the priests clung to their faith to sustain them.

There is a line J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings that Galadriel speaks to Frodo when she gives him her gift. She says: “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”¹² I like to view our faith as that light in the darkness. Dachau was the darkest of the dark. Faith in Christ was the light and saving grace for so many there. If Fr. Bernard and Fr. Leisners’ examples can teach us anything, it is the power and beauty of faith in God.

Resources

Bartrop, Paul R. "Portrayals of Christians in Holocaust Movies: Priests in Dachau and Volker Schlöndorff's The Ninth Day." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 28, no. 4 (2010): Accessed March 5, 2015. EBSCOhost.com.

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

Clairval.com Spiritual Newsletter. “Life of Blessed Karl Leisner.” Clairval.com 2001. Accessed March 5, 2015.http://www.clairval.com/lettres/en/2001/12/12/2121201.htm

Jewishvirtuallibrary.org The Holocaust. “Dachau Concentration Camp: History & Overview.” Jewishvirtuallibrary.org Accessed March 5, 2015.http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/dachau.html

Jewishvirtuallibrary.org The Holocaust. “Concentration Camps: Kapos.” Jewishvirtuallibrary.org Accessed March 5, 2015.http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/dachau.html

O’Malley, William J. “The Priests of Dachau” America 157, no. 14 (1987): Accessed March 2, 2015. EBSCOhost.com. Accessed March 2, 2015.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings Part One: The Fellowship of the Ring. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.

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¹ O’Malley, William J. "The Priest of Dachau." America 157 no. 14 (1987), 352.

² Jewishvirtuallibrary.org The Holocaust. "Dachau Concentration Camp: History & Overview." Jewishvirtuallibrary.org, accessed March 5, 2015, 

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/dachau.html  

³ Jewishvirtuallibrary.org The Holocaust. "Concentration Camp: Kapos." Jewishviruallibrary.org,  accessed March 5, 2015, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kapos.html 

⁴ O’Malley, William J. "The Priest of Dachau." America 157 no. 14 (1987), 352.

⁵ Ibid. 

⁶ Bernard, Jean. Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau. (Bethesda, MD.: Zaccheus Press, 2007), 15.

⁷ Ibid., 103.

⁸ Ibid., 176.

⁹ Clairval.com Spiritual Newsletter. "Life of Blessed Karl Leisner." Clairval.com, 2001, accessed March 5, 2015, http://www.clairval.com/lettres/en/2001/12/12/2121201.htm 

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Bartrop, Paul R. "Portrayals of Christians in Holocaust Movies: Priests in Dachau and Volker Schlöndorff's The Ninth Day." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 28, no. 4 (2010): 34. 

¹² Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings Part One: The Fellowship of the Ring. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 423.