Resistance and martyrdom ” “on Hitler’s Germany

They were killed, but their death could not be publicized: funeral announces and necrology on the press were prohibited, funerals were replaced by furtive cremations and dispersion of ashes or by entombment in common graves. Only of some of them was announced the execution with condemnation for high treason, “to set an example”. This is how thousands of anti-Nazi Germans fell under the tyranny of Adolf Hitler, to which were added five-thousand more, sacrificed at the revenge of the führer in the autumn-winter of seventy years ago after the failed attack of July 20 1944. In the grips of a regime with manifold ever-present police forces, with nine million party affiliates, most of whom were informants prone to denunciation, it’s almost incredible that at a time of fierce dictatorship, forms of opposition in Germany were anchored to solid ethical values. Indeed, the Resistance in Germany had different connotations compared to the other twenty-seven resistance movements that developed in countries occupied by the Wehrmacht, where aversion to the invader played an important role. There was not, in the Third Reich, a rebellious population on which to rely; only consciousness was the chief supporter of the uprising. For this it is necessary to bear in mind the forms of expression of the Widerstand, while its protagonists deserve respect. Opponents rarely had news of each other outside of the small groups to which they belonged, putting in a quandary, nonetheless, structures of power and control by means of a capacity of inventiveness that always eluded the police in pursuit of those “thinking differently’, who sometimes they were able to catch (think of the martyrdom of the young Christian university students of the Weisse Rose of Munich), and sometimes not. That Resistance was camouflaged in the folds of society, marked by individual initiatives capable of setting off the automated repressive organization. For example, at the end of the war it was discovered that thousands of Berlin Jews had been saved, since 1938. Fr Bernhard Lichtenberg (now Blessed), organizer of a protection structure, died while on the road towards Dachau; Maria Terwiel, young Catholic involved in rescuing the persecuted, was hanged; evangelical believer Helmuth James von Moltke who, along with others, thought of post-Germany scenarios, was sentenced and killed and his ashes dispersed. They and many others (among whom figure a dozen of “Saints of the Lagers”) are among the many martyrs who across Europe never renounced combating Nazi lies. Alone, we repeat. In the fall of ’44, the tragic number of those hanged, shot, beheaded following the attempted assassination of Hitler, did not find in democracies at war (unfortunately with poor self-criticism, even posthumously) the understanding that those witnesses deserved. It so happens that today the same German scholars revisit with a critical eye the history of their country, evaluate the magnitude of the faults and recognize to bold minorities the merits they earned. It is a question of valuing the memory of those minorities who courageously saved the honor of their country and their culture, suffering persecution, or who, forced into silence, did not give in to mass opportunism. The “list” of Schindler, who saved a group of Jews from sure death and to whom Steven Spielberg gave the fame he deserved, is not the only initiative of this kind. In fact, similar actions were taken (to name only the most well-known) in Poland by Berthold Beitz, in Ukraine by Friedrich Grabe, and by many others, risking their life. Only much later those episodes, whose protagonists took no pride of, came to light: Beitz said that his behavior had been dictated by his Christian conscience, and that if he had not done so, he would have been ashamed for ever. It is no coincidence that in the Righteous Among the Nations that Israelites honor for having risked their lives helping the persecuted, 510 Germans rank eleventh in a list of 49 nationalities. Not to mention the draft evaders, killed as traitors while they were merely putting into practice the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill”, as Catholic Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter, that the Church has declared Blessed. Conscientious objectors – the very Jägerstätter – have been rehabilitated by the German Parliament only a few years ago, along with outstanding Christian heroes such as, for example, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose death sentence tribunals had reaffirmed the legitimacy of for years. But history, albeit slowly, recovers its truth. And those witnesses, although a minority, represented a charter for the future of Europe and hope of a new Germany.