A Personal Memory of Flossenberg
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by
Lesllie A. Thompson
Chaplain (Lt. Col.) United States Army (Ret)
14 January 1989
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I am a retired Army chaplain with
twenty-six years of service dating from
1940-1967. I served in Europe in World
War II and in Korea and Japan during the
Korean conflict. In this account I am
trying to recall my memories of contacts
with the German concentration camp at
Flossenberg, Germany, in the closing
days of World War II. In writing this
account I have had to rely on memory and
several snapshots which were given to me
by a young soldier who happened to have
a camera available. My notes were lost
in moving about; and in the closing days
of the war, we were moving very fast and
I did not have time to make an adequate
account of happenings. At the time, I
regarded my contacts with Flossenberg as
a normal part of military duty, although
the shock of seeing this concentration
camp at firsthand and the memory of it
is unforgettable. I was the Division
chaplain of the 97th Infantry Division
which was in combat near the
Chechoslovakian border, later crossing
the border to Cheb and Pilsen in
Czechoslovakia.
Since retirement from Army service
in
1967, I have become interested in
reading the books written by and about
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In several of them
I found references to Bonhoeffer having
been put to death by hanging in the
Flossenberg concentration camp on April
9, 1945. My interest in this changed
from a wartime event to a very personal
experience having great significance. A
dedicated, widely known Christian pastor
had been killed by the Nazi regime. An
interesting account of the death of
Bonhoeffer is given in the closing
chapter of the book Dietrich
Bonhoeffer: Letters and Papers from
Prison, edited by Eberhard Bethge and
published by the MacMillan Company
(paper edition).
In April, 1945, the 97th Division
Headquarters moved to Wunsiedel,
Germany, and the Division combat teams
took up positions along the
Czechoslovakian border. Division Rear,
the service section of Division
Headquarters, was located at Weiden. A
day or two after arrival at Weiden, the
Jewish chaplain of XII Corps visited the
chaplain’s section. The news had come
that a concentration camp had been
liberated in our combat area. This was
at Flossenberg, a few miles from Weiden.
I regret that I do not remember the
chaplain’s name. The Jewish chaplain,
along with my assistant Ervin Royse, and
I drove to the camp at Flossenberg. I
expected to find some of our troops in
charge, but none were there due to the
fact that the camp had just been
liberated. We found a Jewish lad of
about thirteen or fourteen years of age
who had been a prisoner. Fortunately,
he and our Jewish chaplain spoke in
Yiddish, which became our language of
contact. Since this young boy seemed to
be the only child around, I supposed the
German guards had not harmed him. He
was nicely dressed and not emaciated as
the other prisoners. This young boy
became our guide. We saw one of the
barracks where the prisoners stayed. He
told of sleeping on the bare wooden
bunks. Sometimes the person sleeping
next to him had died in the night. He
told us that there were prisoners marked
for death by starvation, but in whom the
will to live was strong, and these were
eliminated by holding their heads under
water. He showed us the path from the
main buildings where the prisoners had
to remove their clothes before walking
down a number of steps into a small open
area where they had placed the gallows.
Near this were buildings in which they
stacked the bodies until they had time
to burn them. There was a stack of many
bodies there. Near this I observed a
large cistern-like area with an opening
of about six or eight feet in diameter.
The furnaces were nearby. Looking
down, I saw that it was almost full of
small bones. I realized that this was
the remains of all the bodies of persons
who had been cremated. I wondered how
many thousands of bodies had been
cremated in this manner. As I looked
down, I prayed that God would have mercy
on those who had been so mercilessly
treated.
While at the camp, we toured the working
area where the prisoners had been forced
to manufacture wooden parts for
airplanes. This was a small camp
compared to the size of Dachau and the
larger camps. It had the worst
reputation of all as a death camp. It
seems to have been under the control of
the Gestapo who were committed to
killing Jews and enemies of the State as
were the SS controlled camps.
Flossenberg was one of the eighteen
camps in Germany. The total number of
concentration camps was 146. The small
number of camps in Germany in comparison
to the total number is noted. Two days
later a mass burial ceremony was held
for the unburied dead. The chosen site
was a vacant area in the town of
Flossenberg. The Jewish chaplain gave
the ceremony for the Jewish persons, the
Catholic ceremony was given by Chaplain
John Tivenan, and I gave the Protestant
ceremony. The townspeople were ordered
to attend by the American military in
charge. I was aware that they attended
unwillingly. I remember that it was a
spring day with an invigorating
coolness. The sky was partly cloudy
and nature seemed to be awakening after
winter napping. I received word that the
emaciated prisoners remaining in the
camp were put in the temporary care of a
surrendering German medical unit.
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On May 9, 1945, the war was declared
ended. Through the years I have
wondered about the people who were so
cruelly put to death. At the time I was
in Flossenberg, I regarded my
participation in the ceremony at the
burial of the victims of the
concentration camp as part of my
military duty, but after my retirement
and later return to my home city of
Springfield, Missouri, in January of
1970, I began reading books written by
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I found his books
strongly challenging. As I read about
his life, I read that he had been a
prisoner of the Nazis and that he had
been put to death April 9, 1945, at the
Flossenberg concentration camp. On
learning this my participation in the
burial ceremony became a very personal
experience, as this happened just a few
days after April 9. I do not know if
the Bonhoeffer body was buried in the
mass grave or whether the body had been
cremated and the ashes put in the hole
in the ground where it seemed so many
other ashes had been disposed of. My
prayers, however, included all who
perished there. I prayed that God in
His infinite wisdom would bless and
receive to Himself these souls who had
been so cruelly put to death and those
who had resisted the Nazi barbarism.
The life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was
strong testimonial to his dedication to
serve his Heavenly Father. A brief
summary follows:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau
on February 4, 1906, of distinguished
parents. He studied at Tubingen and
Berlin Universities. In 1930 he
attended Union Theological Seminary in
New York for a year. He pastored
churches in London before returning to
Germany in 1935. On May 29-31, 1934,
the Confessional Evangelical Church met
in Barmen with members of the Lutheran,
Reformed and United Churches present.
The Confession reaffirmed their desires
to band together in their Confession of
Jesus Christ as “the way, the truth and
the life.” They reaffirmed that Jesus
Christ was the head of the church. They
rejected the effort of the State to rule
over, control and dominate the church.
In other words, they rejected Hitler and
the Nazi Party. It was a courageous
statement against the excesses that were
being perpetuated. Bonhoeffer
enthusiastically supported the concept
of the confessing church and worked as
one of its leaders. He is credited with
effectively keeping the conference on
track and from. turning it into an
ineffectual discussion.
Bonhoeffer made a lecture tour in
America in 1939. His friends urged that
he not return to Germany, but he wanted
to return to support the confessing
church and the Resistance Movement.
Through his brother-in-law, Hans von
Dohnanyi, he learned of the conspiracy
to overthrow the Nazi government which
involved Generals Werner von Fritsch,
Ludwig Beck and several prominent
government officials. Bonhoeffer came
to believe that his ideas of pacifism
were inadequate and that it would take a
resistance movement to free Germany and
the world from the inhuman and criminal
activity of Hitler and the Nazi Party;
so at the insistence of his sister and
brother-in-law, he joined the conspiracy
against Hitler.
The Resistance Movement is credited with
many attempts on the life of Hitler.
One was on March 13, 1943, when General
von Treackow and an aide planted a bomb
on Hitler’s private plane. The
detonator failed and the bomb was
discovered. Another attempt was on
March 20, 1943. Colonel Rudolf von
Gertsdorff planned to detonate a bomb
close to Hitler at the Zeughaus in
Berlin. Hitler left the hall before the
bomb exploded. On April 5, 1943,
Bonhoeffer with his sister Christel and
her husband Hans won Dohnanyi were
arrested and jailed in Tegel, a military
prison.
The most serious attempt of the
resistance group to which Bonhoeffer
belonged failed on July 20, 1944. The
bomb left Hitler dazed and slightly
injured. Five collaborators were
executed. In the investigation,
implicating documents and interrogations
of prisoners under torture indicated a
nationwide network. Hitler became
convinced of this and gave orders that
their trials be prolonged in order that
they might find other conspirators.
After Tegel, Bonhoeffer was transferred
from one Gestapo prison to another in
Berlin, Buchenwald, Schonberg, and
finally Flossenberg, and all contact
with the outside world was severed.
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On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a service of worship. As he ended his last prayer, two men came for him. He spoke to an English officer, “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.” The next day, April 9, 1945, he was hanged in Flossenberg. Among those who died with Bonhoeffer were fellow participants in the Resistance Movement: Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Major General Hans Oster, Judge Advocate General Carl Sack, Captain Ludwig Gehre, and a man named Strunk. Also executed on the same day was Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi at Sachsenhausen. It is difficult to understand the persistence of revenge at the time the German armies were falling apart. The allies were rapidly advancing, resistance was crumbling. Huppenkothen, a magistrate, was sent from Berlin with instructions to conduct a summary trial and to execute Canaris, Sack, Oster, Gehre, Strunk and Bonhoeffer, all prisoners in Flossenberg. The prisoners were ordered to remove their clothing and were led down the steps under the trees to the secluded place of execution. Naked under the scaffold, Bonhoeffer knelt for the last time to pray. Within five minutes, his life was ended. Memorial services for Bonhoeffer were held at Holy Trinity Church in London on July 27, 1945, at the instigation of the Bishop of Chichester. The announcement of this service over the radio was the first word of Bonhoeffer’s death that his family had received. Another memorial service was held in Berlin on April 9, 1946.
On Easter Sunday, 1953, the pastors of Bavaria unveiled in the church in Flossenberg a tablet with the simple inscription: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness of Jesus Christ among his brethren. Born February 4, 1906, in Breslau. Died April 9, 1945, in Flossenberg.”
This was my brief contact with the liberation of the camp at Flossenberg. It was a small camp compared to Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald. I do not know how to estimate the number of persons killed there. I would estimate it at several hundred thousand. Auschwitz is estimated as having killed 2,000,000. At one period, 24,000 Jews a day were received for mass slaughter.
After hostilities ended and the 97th
Division completed its mission in
Czechoslovakia, with the capture of Cheb
and Pilsen, the Division was pulled back
to Bamberg. At this time one of the
regimental chaplains requested that a
Jewish soldier be taken to Munich to
visit his high school. He had managed
to escape and make his way into the
United States where he joined the U.S.
Army. He had pleasant memories of his
high school days. I desired to visit
the chaplain of our next higher
headquarters (V Corps) and arranged for
Chaplain Edwin Settle, the Jewish
soldier whose name I cannot remember, my
assistant, Ervin Poyse, and me to drive
to Munich.
First, we left the young man off at his
high school. After a visit at Corps
Headquarters, we returned for our
passenger. He was disappointed. He had
expected a pleasant visit to his school,
but especially was he displeased as he
met one of he teachers he had known
before, and he was a Nazi. We asked him
if he wanted to find anyone else. He
said he would very much like to visit
his former music teacher. We drove him
to the residence, and he invited
Chaplain Settle and me to go in with
him. His music teacher was genuinely
glad to see him. They had a pleasant
visit. He asked her if she would play
the piano for him. She graciously
refused, then held up her hands to show
us that they were gnarled and twisted.
She explained that she had been forced
to work in a factory. She then asked
her former student to play for her, and
she led us into an average sized room in
which was a large grand piano. The
young man seated himself and played. I
listened and thought how the lovely bond
of music could reunite two people after
all that they had both suffered. It was
a moving experience, and I never forgot
it.
World War II was an expensive war, as to
cost of lives and money. It was more
expensive in its damage to the human
spirit of mankind. The volume of hatred
generated and released in the world
affects us even today. Hate used as a
political weapon is dangerous to the
future of mankind. Somehow we must
learn to use love as an instrument in
our lives end relationships. May God
forgive us and help us to build our
lives. It is the only way. We cannot
afford another Holocaust.
Amen
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