Every once in a while a story comes across my screen that I feel is worth sharing- This priest reminds me of our good friend Venerable Father Walter Ciszek (see Blog Mar. 15, 2012).
FATHER HERMANN SCHEIPERS died June 2 at the venerable age of 102. He was the last Catholic priest imprisoned in the Dachau
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He was a young priest in 1940 when he was arrested by the Nazis. Dachau , near Munich
His work among young people, soon after his ordination, drew the attention of the Nazis. Because he was sympathetic to Polish forced laborers, celebrating Mass with them and hearing their confessions, he was arrested in 1940 and brought to Dachau
Father Scheipers recalled the way the camp commander welcomed him and his fellow inmates: “You are without honor, without help and without rights. Here, you can either work or perish.”
Father wore the number 24255 on his prison uniform and worked along side the other prisoners as slave laborers. “The only thing one could do was escape or pray,” Father Scheipers recalled in his memoirs, Balancing Act – Priest Under Two Dictatorships.
At one point he was in danger of being sent to the gas chamber, but was spared death when his twin sister, Anna, pleaded with officials in Berlin, warning them of a strong reaction among the Catholic population if the execution was carried out. The courageous Anna also helped save around 500 other priests from the gas chambers.
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Fr. Hermann Scheipers in 2011, photographed in Dresden on the occasion of the beatification of Alojs Andritzki, who was killed in Dachau in 1943. Father Scheipers and Blessed Alojs were both in the camp’s sickbay with typhoid fever for some time. |
A fellow priest was not as lucky, and years later, Father Scheipers would movingly recall how he gave him his ration of bread before he was taken to his death. “Every time when I celebrate Mass and break the bread, I think of that,” he said.
In April of 1945, Father Scheipers managed to escape from a death march towards Bad Tölz.
After the war Father returned to his former place of work in the Diocese of Dresden-Meißen. There he resisted those in power in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany Dachau
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