The Priest Barracks

The Priest Barracks
Author: Guillaume Zeller
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2017-05-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1681497662

At the Nazi concentration camp Dachau, three barracks out of thirty were occupied by clergy from 1938 to 1945. The overwhelming majority of the 2,720 men imprisoned in these barracks were Catholics—2,579 priests, monks, and seminarians from all over Europe. More than a third of the prisoners in the "priest block" died there. The story of these men, which has been submerged in the overall history of the concentration camps, is told in this riveting historical account. Both tragedies and magnificent gestures are chronicled here--from the terrifying forced march in 1942 to the heroic voluntary confinement of those dying of typhoid to the moving clandestine ordination of a young German deacon by a French bishop. Besides recounting moving episodes, the book sheds new light on Hitler's system of concentration camps and the intrinsic anti-Christian animus of Nazism.

You Shall Be My Witnesses

You Shall Be My Witnesses
Author: Archbishop Kazimierz Majdański
Publisher: Square One Publishers, Inc.
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0757052231

When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the Catholic Church had a powerful influence on the Polish people. Because this threatened their absolute control, the Nazis set out to destroy the clergy, who were arrested and thrown into concentration camps along with the Jews. Among them was a young seminarian, Kazimierz Majdański. In You Shall Be My Witnesses Majdański chronicles his prison experiences during the war. His words are a testament to the faith and courage of the many voices that were silenced in concentration camps.

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
Author: Kai Kappel
Publisher: Deutscher Kunstverlag
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9783422022386

The first complete documentation covering the chapels, churches and convent built on the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site from 1960-1995 and also the Jewish Memorial. These include the Protestant Church of Reconciliation by Helmut Striffler, a major work of postwar architecture in Germany. The work also addresses the problematic planning processes in the first decade after liberation. Dachau, set up in March 1933 as one of the first permanent concentration camps, is still today a synonym for the inhuman National Socialist machinery of oppression,"a precinct whose soil burns us through the soles of our shoes, even if we have never set foot on it" (Ulrich Conrads). Shortly after liberation, there were already plans to contain the concentration camp site in a Christian framework by erecting crosses and churches. These plans were based on the experience of the clergymen previously interned in Dachau. Between 1960 and 1967, at the time when the Concentration Camp Memorial Site was being developed, the Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel, the Jewish Memorial and the internationally famous Protestant Church of Reconciliation were built in a "place of meditation". Later, the Carmelite Convent of the Precious Blood and the Russian Orthodox Resurrection Chapel were added. The religious memorials on the former Dachau camp site bear witness to a new social departure and to the earnest intention to engage in commemoration. For the first time, this richly illustrated publication presents in one volume both the complex story of their construction and also their works of art. In addition, those who work at Dachau describe the church memorial work on site.

Then They Came for Me

Then They Came for Me
Author: Matthew D Hockenos
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0465097871

"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out-Because I was not a Communist . . . " Few today recognize the name Martin Niemör, though many know his famous confession. In Then They Came for Me, Matthew Hockenos traces Niemör's evolution from a Nazi supporter to a determined opponent of Hitler, revealing him to be a more complicated figure than previously understood. Born into a traditionalist Prussian family, Niemör welcomed Hitler's rise to power as an opportunity for national rebirth. Yet when the regime attempted to seize control of the Protestant Church, he helped lead the opposition and was soon arrested. After spending the war in concentration camps, Niemör emerged a controversial figure: to his supporters he was a modern Luther, while his critics, including President Harry Truman, saw him as an unrepentant nationalist. A nuanced portrait of courage in the face of evil, Then They Came for Me puts the question to us today: What would I have done?

After Dachau

After Dachau
Author: Daniel Quinn
Publisher: Steerforth
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1581952406

“A rare moral thriller in the tradition of Fahrenheit 451,” this stunning work from the author of Ishmael is set in a white-washed alternate world where Nazis won the war (Village Voice) Daniel Quinn, well known for Ishmael—a life-changing book for readers the world over—once again turns the tables and creates an otherworld that is very like our own, yet fascinating beyond words. Imagine that Nazi Germany was the first to develop an atomic bomb and the Allies surrendered. America was never bombed, occupied, or even invaded, but was nonetheless forced to recognize Nazi world dominance. The Nazis continued to press their campaign to rid the planet of “mongrel races” until eventually the world—from Capetown to Tokyo—was populated by only white faces. Two thousand years in the future, people don’t remember, or much care, about this distant past. The reality is that to be human is to be Caucasian, and what came before was literally ancient history having nothing to do with those then living. Now imagine that reincarnation is real, that souls migrate over time from one living creature to another, and that a soul that once animated an American black woman living at the time of World War II now animates an Aryan in Quinn’s new world—and that due to a traumatic accident, memories of this earlier incarnation assert themselves. Compared by readers and critics alike to 1984 and Brave New World, After Dachau is a new dystopian classic with much to say about our own time, and the dynamics of human history.

Virtues for Ordinary Christians

Virtues for Ordinary Christians
Author: James F. Keenan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 156
Release: 1996
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781556129087

This book offers virtue as the starting point for doing moral reflection and for giving moral advice.Taking familiar patterns from ordinary life, Keenan weaves one virtue after another through the fabric of human existence.

And who Will Kill You

And who Will Kill You
Author: Bedřich Hoffmann
Publisher:
Total Pages: 592
Release: 1994
Genre: History
ISBN:

The translation of a Czech priests' eyewitness account of the treatment of Catholic priests and other clergy in German concentration camps during World War II.

Shavelings in Death Camps

Shavelings in Death Camps
Author: Fr. Henryk Maria Malak
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2012-09-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786492856

Catholic priests all across Poland were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps at the beginning of World War II. This memoir by Fr. Henryk Maria Malak (1912-1987) is their story and his. Through the author's eyes we witness the German invasion, atrocities against the local population, and the roundup of priests from the region. A series of "transports" takes them to Stutthof and Grenzdorf in Poland, then to Sachsenhausen and Dachau in Germany. Fr. Malak spent more than four years at Dachau, and he describes camp life in detail. (His final chapters are entries from a diary he kept secretly near the end of the war.) Some priests are selected for medical experiments; others are sent on "death transports." Throughout their ordeal they face brutal treatment, hard labor, hunger, disease. Although many perish along the way, all remain steadfast in their faith and in their loyalty to Poland.