A case in point is the story of the Evangelical minister Paul Schneider, killed in the Nazi concentration camps on July 18th 1949, called by the other prisoners "the preacher of Buchenwald". His story was told by Elsa Ulrike Ross from the association bearing the same name in his memory. "Schneider was the first protestant minister to have been killed in the concentration camps even before the start of the war – she said -. He was a simple country priest and he only wanted to follow his way that he considered just before God". Schneider, born in Rhineland, married, father of six, at first became enthusiastic about Hitler, "but, a few months later, as he read his book, he realised what his position was. He said to everyone that Hitler would have been bad news for the Germans". Confined in a little village and arrested several times by Gestapo, finally he was taken to Buchenwald, where he became prisoner "2.491". On Hitler’s birthday, he refused to pay tribute to the swastika, he was locked up one year in solitary confinement and tortured all the time, "but he never stopped praying and encouraging the other prisoners by preaching and singing until he was violently killed". His example, concluded Ulrike Ross, "teaches us to work and pray to remain firm and confident even in extreme conditions, not to keep silent before injustice and not to choose the easy way chosen by others". The testimony of a former student of Edith Stein and the memory of the 7 Poles arrested, tortured and beheaded in Dresden 60 years ago (beatified by John Paul II in 1999) concluded the meeting.
