7 February 1945 A.D. Mr. (Rev. Dr.) Dietrich Bonhoeffer Transferred to Buchenwald Concentration Camp
7
February 1945 A.D. Mr.
(Rev. Dr.) Dietrich Bonhoeffer Transferred to Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Graves,
Dan. “Bonhoeffer Transferred to Buchenwald Concentration Camp.” Christianity.com.
May 2007. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1901-2000/bonhoeffer-transferred-to-buchenwald-concentration-camp-11630780.html. Accessed 14 Jul 2014.
The Lutheran theologian Deitrich
Bonhoeffer answered that the Christian's
duty is to resist such a regime. This landed him in a concentration camp and
cost him his life.
Safe in exile in America, he
abruptly returned to Germany. "I have come to the conclusion that I have
made a mistake in coming to America. I shall have no right to participate in
the reconstruction of the Christian life in Germany after the war if I did not
share in the trials of this time with my people. Christians
in Germany face the terrible alternative of willing the defeat of their nation
in order that civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation
and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must
choose. But I cannot make that choice in security."
In Germany Bonhoeffer worked with
the underground resistance. He helped guide Jews to safety. Believing that
Hitler was like a madman "driving a car into a group of innocent
bystanders," he joined a plot to kill the Führer.
After he was arrested for his aid
to the Jews, his role in the plot was discovered. There was little hope he
would survive Nazi wrath. Nonetheless Bonhoeffer was personally at peace.
Suffering, he said, had become a better key for understanding the world than
happiness had ever been.
On this day February 7, 1945, he was transferred to the terrible Buchenwald
Concentration Camp where many thousands of prisoners died, some under cruel
medical experiments. Three months later Bonhoeffer corpse was added to the list
of dead. He was hanged days before the allies freed the camp. He had fulfilled
his own theology, aptly expressed in his book The Cost of Discipleship:
"The one thing that matters is practical obedience. That will resolve
[man's] difficulties and make him free to become the child of God."
When the government usurps God's
place, what is the Christian to do? By his life and death, Bonhoeffer
exemplified one solution. [We caution that scripture teaches it is not right to
do evil that good may come.]
Bibliography:
Bonhoeffer, Deitrich. The Cost of Discipleship.
New York: Macmillan, 1959.
"Bonhoeffer, Deitrich." The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A.
Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
Various encyclopedia and internet articles.
Last updated May,
2007.
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