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.
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