Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Dachau survivors at prayer


Da Mihi presents this silent video of Dachau survivors, under the caption that they are priests, they are at some kind of post-Mass devotion. I am not quite sure what is happeng, the look on the faces of the members of the congregations is haunting. I find the fingering of their rosaries and the making of the signs of the cross incredibly beautiful.

11 comments:

Basil said...

This is amazing - it is like witnessing the holy souls.

pelerin said...

Indeed this is incredibly beautiful. What faith, devotion and dignity is reflected in their gaunt faces which had witnessed such suffering.

I had the privilege of sharing a cafe table with someone in 2008 whose father had been taken prisoner and sent to Dachau.

When typhus broke out, he had tended to the sick and bravely carried on even after having contracted the disease. She proudly told me that his cause for beatification has been put forward. Her father was not a Priest of course, but one of his grandsons is now a Bishop who of course is very proud of his grandfather's bravery in the Resistance and subsequent care of the sick when in Dachau Concentration Camp.

GOR said...

Yes Father, very moving.

Delia said...

Beautiful. Says 5 May, so less than a week after the camp was liberated on 29 April.

Mariana said...

"Says 5 May, so less than a week after the camp was liberated on 29 April."

Actually, I'm speechless. Thank you, Father!

Mariana said...

Also, I'm going to be more particular about the way I put my hands together after making the Sign of the Cross, I don't think you could go wrong in emulating the way these men do it!

Michael Clifton said...

pictures here were taken in the chapel at Dachau built after the war and a smaller replica of the chapel which the Germans allowed the priest to build..which held 800 all standing. I believe at the end of the war there were nearly 2000 priests there. I think that 45 of them are beatified.

Delia said...

Article about priests in Dachau:

www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20030328.html

Ma Tucker said...

I thought their hand movements were like a priests offering Mass. Was this a priest block?

Edward P. Walton said...

If they had been liberated in less than a week, I am surprised that some were in that good shape.

I quess there is always a, King Rat, even in the priests block.

I have been to Dachau several times in the early 1960's having lived in Bad Tolz from 1959 till around 1962.

Hestor said...

If only we had the faith of these men...

The Lord’s descent into the underworld

At Matins/the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday the Church gives us this 'ancient homily', I find it incredibly moving, it is abou...