Jesus Suffers Through His Priests at Dachau during WWII

Greetings in Jesus and Mary....

We are now the day before Holy Thursday. May we reflect on the sufferings of Jesus' priests and all they endured for His sake. May they now be enjoying their eternal reward for their love and faithfulness to Our Saviour Jesus Christ. The following is taken from the book...."Martyr of Brotherly Love"....

Besides the various disciplinary works, the following punishments were most feared: hanging on the tree, twenty-five double lashes, which sometimes were given outside in front of all the prisoners, and the standing cell. The standing cell was a torture of a special kind. The prisoner had to stay in a fifty-four centimeter and 2.10 meters high enclosure for two weeks on bread and water. Sadistic guards, by means of needle points, kept the tortured prisoner from sitting.

Johann Neuhausler describes the twenty-five double lashes on the rack in Dachau….“It pleased the guards when the prisoner screamed, wept, howled, or fainted from pain...shortly before the penalty, the prisoner was told that he must conscientiously count the lashes. If, because of the pain, he forgot to count, they would not know how many lashes he had received, and they would have to begin to count all over again. If the prisoner miscounted, the whole show started over, so that sometimes the twenty-five lashes became thirty or forty. Blood poured out in streams. One SS man bragged that blood began to flow already on his first blow.

Fr. Emil Kiesel from the Archdiocese of Freiburg, I think, had to bear the worst punishments of all the German clergy. They found a rosary on him when he was admitted to Dachau. He had to undress immediately and stand stark naked in the snow. The SS men made a hellish racket, danced around him, ridiculed him, boxed his ears, and beat him wildly. An hour later, he came from the cold into the bath, then followed the usual admittance procedure.

Another time, Fr. Kiesel was clamped to the rack because he secretly heard the confessions of two companions; a camp spy had reported it. Kiesel refused to talk when the barracks leader wanted to know what the two confessed. Thereupon he was put in the dark cell for forty two days. The SS man at first visited him almost every day, had his revolver under his nose, and said; “If you don’t tell me now what the two confessed, I’ll kill you!” After many days of this turture, Fr. Kiesel answered the SS man: “Pull the trigger, please, so that I will finally have peace!” Then the SS man laughed sarcastically and left with the remark: “You would like that, you priest pig! But I don’t want to make a martyr of you!” From then on, he left Fr. Kiesel in peace, until his forty two days were up.

Once during winter, a clergyman had to lie a whole night naked and without blankets upon a table with the windows open. He fainted, but his heart continued to pump. He held out until morning, until Dr. Rascher came and was satisfied with the experiment. If his heart had stopped, there would have been one less prisoner, that is all.

It was horrifying to the prisoners in Dachau to watch their companions being beaten, put on the rack, hanged, trampled on, shot, or subjected to medical experiments. Fr. Franz Weinmann writes: “We silently defied the violence. We quietly bore the injustice. Courage was needed for that. Obstinate rage and repressed indignation shone in some faces. Others’ looks betrayed equanimity and quiet pity...In our ranks, too, there were those who quietly prayed for the tormented and also for the tormenters. And that was, I believe, the greatest weapon which we defenseless ones had.

Father Engelmar was among those who made use of this weapon of prayer daily. In the face of the general misery, the satanic cruelties, and the beastly atrocities, he never lost faith in a good and just God. Untiringly, he stormed Heaven that God would end the suffering and grant the world peace.

In one saved letter by Fr. Engelmar, he wrote: “God grant that the present time of testing will soon end, or at least that it will not break people, but make them better. We usually think that suffering leads to God, but we see that very hard afflictions also break many tepid persons and that their divine intention is not recognized by some. Nothing, however, is impossible with God, so we want to continue to storm Heaven that God may have mercy on the many who have strayed and are severely tested.”

Our Lady of Dachau, Sorrowful Mother, pray for us!