A Lamb and a Shepherd Among Wolves

In the previous essay in this series, we honored Blessed Otto Neururer, the first priest to be executed by the Nazis. We also acknowledged those better-known victims of the Third Reich’s anti-Christian pogrom, St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). It is also fitting, however, that we should commemorate some other largely-unknown victims of Hitler’s National Socialist regime.

A Thousand Days: John ... Schlesinger Jr., Arthu... Best Price: $7.08 Buy New $14.74 (as of 06:27 UTC - Details) On August 9, 1943, on the first anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross at Auschwitz, a devout Austrian Catholic, Franz Jägerstätter, was guillotined at Brandenburg-Görden Prison in Germany. The “crime” for which he was executed was being a conscientious objector who refused to be enlisted in the Wehrmacht, the army of the Third Reich. His martyrdom was the culmination of five years of passive resistance to the Nazis.

In March 1938, after German troops occupied Austria, Jägerstätter was the only person in his village to vote against the annexation of Austria (the Anschluss) in the following month’s referendum to ratify de jure what the Nazis had already accomplished de facto with their military occupation of the country. “I believe there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country,” he wrote.

Jägerstätter attended Mass daily and served as the sacristan at the local parish church. On December 8, 1940, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, he became a Third Order Franciscan. In February 1943, he was conscripted into the army of the Third Reich. Firm in his resolution to refuse to serve the Nazi cause, he declared his conscientious objection and was immediately arrested, interrogated repeatedly, and imprisoned. From Tegel Prison in Berlin, he wrote:

Is it not more Christian to offer oneself as a victim right away rather than first have to murder others who certainly have a right to live and want to live—just to prolong one’s own life a little while?

The crime for which Jägerstätter stood accused was Wehrkraftzersetzung (undermining military morale), for which he was sentenced to death. A few days later, he was visited in prison by his wife and his parish priest, both of whom tried to talk him into saving his life by serving in the army. As he and his wife had three daughters, the eldest of whom was only six years old, one can only imagine the temptation he must have felt to fight for a cause which he knew to be evil. In the end, his conscience prevailed over the pleadings of his wife and his parish priest. It would be better for his daughters to see their father as a martyr, he explained to his wife, than to see him as a Nazi collaborator. The Politically Incorr... Kevin R. C. Gutzman Best Price: $3.55 Buy New $8.80 (as of 02:20 UTC - Details)

As he prepared to die, Jägerstätter’s resolve was strengthened by the example of the Austrian priest, Franz Reinisch, who had been executed a year earlier for his refusal to take the Hitler oath required of all conscripts to the military. Minutes before his execution, Jägerstätter refused to sign a document which would have saved his life, determined to avoid any complicity with the Nazi regime.

Jägerstätter’s last recorded words before his death are those of a true Christian martyr: “I am completely bound in inner union with the Lord.”

As one who offered his life as a sacrificial lamb, in union with the Lamb Himself, Franz Jägerstätter was duly honored by the Church. In June 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apostolic exhortation declaring him a martyr. Four months later, Jägerstätter was beatified. In attendance at the beatification ceremony were sixty members of Jägerstätter’s family, including his widow and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Their presence was a living testimony to the culture of life for which he had laid down his own life more than sixty years earlier.

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