PRIESTBLOCK 25487

A Memoir of Dachau

by Jean Bernard, translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider

Zaccheus Press, 2007

172 pages, $14.95

To order: 1-800-775-9673

zaccheuspress.com

The number of Catholic schools collaborating with Jewish organizations to study the Nazi Holocaust has been increasing over the past few years. If the story of Father Jean Bernard is not part of the curricula, it should be.

Father Bernard worked for the Brussels-based International Catholic Cinema Office before World War II. The Gestapo closed his office after the invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg in 1940. Half a year later, they arrested the priest, accusing him of inciting fellow countrymen with “separatist propaganda.”

Taken to Dachau, he was confined with other men of the cloth who had become victims of Hitler’s hatred of Christianity. Most of Father Bernard’s fellow inmates were priests, and their barracks became known as the Priestblock.

Thanks to his sheer will to survive, his keen insight into the system, and help from a few good souls, Father Bernard lived to tell of the experience. He did that through regular installments in a Luxembourg Catholic daily newspaper after the war.

The series turned into a book in 1962, and Zaccheus Press of Bethesda, Md., has published Deborah Lucas Schneider’s new translation of it.

The slim volume comes three years after the appearance of Volker Schlöndorf’s film The Ninth Day, which is loosely based on this memoir. The film focuses on a decision the priest must make when he is granted a highly unusual leave. One must read the brief account very closely in order not to miss the moral dilemma Father Bernard is presented: whether to save his own life yet betray his priest friends back at Dachau.

In resisting the Gestapo’s sly attempt at using a priest’s profession of allegiance as propaganda in the highly Catholic parts of the Low Countries, he pretty much seals his fate of dying in the camp.

One wishes Father Bernard had not written so matter-of-factly about this decision but had drawn it out. Not every reader will have the historical background to help him see what’s going on.

Father Bernard does give a vivid description of camp life, though, and parts of it are not for the faint-hearted reader. Though some of the context is lacking (one wonders, for example, who the “head prisoners” are who treat the others so brutally, whether they are fellow priests who have sold out in order to gain some power in the camp), Father Bernard’s account is riveting.

This book is an important primary source for historians of the Nazi era, and the accounts of Father Bernard and his fellow priests having to surreptitiously say Mass, hear each other’s confessions, and even smuggle the Blessed Sacrament into camp are stark reminders of how precious the faith is.

Some have questioned where God was during the Holocaust. The despair behind the question could very easily lead to self-destruction.

Father Jean Bernard informs us where God was — he was there, suffering along with his priests and many others.

John Burger is

the Register’s news editor.