Charles Lewis. Review of The Priest Barracks: Dachau 1938-1945 by By Guillaume Zeller. National Catholic Register .
Updated. “On July 20, 1933, six months after Hitler rose to power, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, and the German vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, signed a concordat — a sort of peace treaty between the six-month-old Nazi regime and the Roman Catholic Church.
To those sympathetic to Rome, it was seen as a way of making sure the Church and its 20 million members in Germany would remain safeguarded from the new pagan regime.
For critics, though, it appeared as if the Roman Catholic Church was lending credibility to the Nazis and their racist policies. It is said that Hitler took the pact as tacit approval of his regime.
Under the deal was the odious requirement that new bishops had to swear a loyalty oath to Hitler and the Nazi state.
At the time the concordat was signed, the Nazis had just begun their sterilization program to prevent those they deemed unfit to procreate. It was later followed by state-sanctioned euthanasia. Both things violated Catholic teaching.
As is noted in The Priest Barracks: Dachau 1938-1945 by Guillaume Zeller, the Church was soon at loggerheads with the government. And the response of the state was brutal.
“Fifteen thousand [Church] establishments were closed,” writes Zeller. “Religious associations were gradually repressed. While Catholic youth associations were compelled to disband because of repeated harassment, enrollment in the Hitler Youth was made obligatory.”
For those clergy who showed any resistance to the regime — everything from failing to give the Hitler salute to aiding political dissidents, protecting Jews or speaking out against euthanasia — it meant a trip to Dachau, the notorious Nazi concentration camp near Munich…. Read it all
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“What we priests were forced to endure under the Nazi regime, especially in Dachau concentration camp, is no more than a cup filled from the vast sea of human suffering in the world today,” wrote Fr. John Lenz. “It is not this suffering as such that is important. The important thing is to show those who have crosses of their own to bear in life just what the grace of God can do for those who follow faithfully in the footsteps of Christ the Crucified. It is no less important to reveal the wickedness of Hell.”
The Nazi hellhole Dachau concentration camp held the largest number of Catholic priests — more than 2,400 — in the Nazi camp system. They came from two dozen countries, from every background — parish priests and prelates, monks and friars, teachers and missionaries. More than one-third were killed.
Among the survivors was Fr. Lenz, who was asked by his superiors to write an account of what he saw — and experienced — so that it would not be forgotten. This book, filled with gripping real-life stories and eighty photos, was the stunning result and became an immediate sensation.
This work is unique among those written on the Holocaust; it reveals how, by tireless sacrifice amid barbaric suffering, the Church was victorious in one of the darkest times in human history. When the Nazis entered several European countries, many people were afraid to speak up. Numerous priests, however, continued to preach the gospel and the truth about the dignity of life and freedom. Through their courageous witness you will learn about:
The arrest and imprisonment of priests and other faithful citizens
What really happened at Dachau and the horrific treatment of prisoners
How priests ministered to fellow prisoners and prayed unceasingly in the camps
Ways in which priests secretly brought the Blessed Sacrament to the people and heard confessions
Spiritual lessons learned in the face of death and despair
“Only when we are forced to endure the most profound suffering and hardship do we learn how to catch hold of God’s hand in our misery,” Fr. Lenz reflected. “We learn to pray.”
Catholic Critique 