Henry F. Gerecke

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Henry Fred Gerecke (born August 2, 1893 in Gordonville , Missouri , † October 11, 1961 in Chester , Illinois ) looked after the defendants as a Protestant clergyman together with the Catholic priest Sixtus O'Connor (OFM) in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . Little is known about his later life.

Life

childhood and education

Gerecke grew up as the child of a farmer and his wife in Gordonville, Missouri. The family was bilingual - German and English - and very religious. After school, he attended St. John's College in Winfield, Kansas from 1913 to 1918 and later graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis . In 1926 he was a Lutheran pastor of Christ Lutheran Church ordained and appointed head of the 1935 Lutheran City Mission appointed by St. Louis. He was now in charge of schools, hospitals and prisons. Gerecke also got involved personally, mostly in the city's prison. During this time he also married his wife Alma and sons Henry and Carlton were born.

During the Second World War , he left St. Louis on August 17, 1943 to become a chaplain in the US Army . After a short stay in Fort Jackson (South Carolina) he was transferred to England in March 1944. There he worked in the 98th General Hospital, where he cared for the sick and wounded for 14 months. In June 1945, shortly after the end of the war, the hospital was moved to France, and a month later to Munich . There he saw the liberated Dachau concentration camp . His sons Henry and Carlton were badly wounded in the war.

In early November 1945, Gerecke was called to the office of his superior, Colonel James Sullivan. He learned that he should be transferred to the 6850th Internal Security Detachment in Nuremberg to work as a chaplain and pastor for the Nazi war criminals on trial there. Originally chaplain Carl R. Eggers was supposed to take over this task, but when the court moved from Berlin to Nuremberg on November 12, 1945, the request went to Gerecke. Sullivan pointed out that it was the most unpopular assignment imaginable and advised him to go to the reserve with reference to his age (52) . After a few days to think about it, Gerecke decided to accept the order. He was commissioned by the US Army for three reasons: He spoke German, had experience in prison chaplaincy, and was Evangelical Lutheran. 15 of the 21 accused were Protestants, the remaining six Roman Catholic . The clergyman Sixtus O'Connor was responsible for the pastoral care of the Catholics. The prison's commanding officer , Colonel Burton Andrus, explained to them that pastoral care and worshiping with any prisoner were allowed, but only if the prisoners requested it.

Pastor in Nuremberg

Note: Since Gerecke always reported on his experiences in English, the quotations are also, although German was mostly spoken.
Henry Gerecke Sixtus O'Connor
Karl Doenitz Hans Frank
Wilhelm Frick Alfred Jodl
Hans Fritzsche Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Walther Funk Franz von Papen
Hermann Goering Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Rudolf Hess Julius Streicher
Wilhelm Keitel
Konstantin von Neurath
Erich Raeder
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Alfred Rosenberg
Fritz Sauckel
Hjalmar shaft
Baldur von Schirach
Albert Speer

Gerecke began work on November 12, 1945. He decided to visit each prisoner individually first. Rudolf Hess sat in the first cell . Gerecke held out her hand and Hess accepted. Gerecke asked him in German: "Would you care to attend chapel service on Sunday evening?" Hess said no in English. So Gerecke also asked in English: “Do you feel you can get along as well without attending as if you did?” , whereupon he replied: “I expect to be extremely busy preparing my defense, if I have any praying to do, I'll do it right here in my cell. I'll not have to come upstairs to pray to your god. " In the next cell sat Hermann Goering , reading and smoking a meerschaum pipe. During the conversation he enthusiastically accepted to attend the service. The prison psychologist later told Gerecke that Göring only did this to get out of his cell for a while.

Wilhelm Keitel sat in the third cell and read the Bible. When Gerecke asked him about it, he replied: "I know from this book that God can love a sinner like me." In the following conversation, he agreed to attend the service and asked him to attend his devotion. Keitel knelt by his bed, began to pray and confessed to many sins . Then Gerecke gave him his blessing. Fritz Sauckel sat in the fourth cell . He agreed to attend the service and wanted to know from Gerecke how he could best prepare for it. Admiral Raeder also agreed, as he had already expressed an interest in it beforehand. Karl Dönitz was not interested in spiritual things, but accepted.

Joachim von Ribbentrop sat in the next cell . He had doubts about the Christian faith, which he shared with Gerecke in the months before the verdict. Ribbentrop refused to attend the service. The inmate of the next cell, Alfred Rosenberg , was also not interested in faith, but, like Walther Funk and Hans Fritzsche, agreed to attend the service. Baldur von Schirach , Wilhelm Frick and Albert Speer also agreed to come to the chapel on Sunday.

The first service took place on the following Sunday, November 18, 1945. For this, the wall between two cells was removed in order to build a small chapel with an organ . A former Lieutenant Colonel of the SS served as organist. Of the 15 chairs made available, 13 were occupied, Hess and Rosenberg did not come. Their seats were occupied the first time by the witnesses Albert Kesselring and Hess' former secretary. After the service was over, Sauckel wanted to see Gerecke in his cell, where they exchanged a few words and prayed together. In the following weeks he received his own Bible and instruction in the catechism . When Christmas 1945 stood before the door, the circle of communicants expanded to include Schellenberg, Fritzsche, von Schirach and Speer. Keitel also followed. In the summer of 1946 Raeder and Ribbentrop joined them.

Henry Gerecke, now 53, was allowed to travel back to the United States to his family in late summer 1946. When the defendants heard of this, Hans Fritzsche wrote a letter to Frau Gerecke on June 14, 1946, which was signed not only by the Protestants but also by the Catholic defendants as well as Hess and Rosenberg. The letter was sent to Gerecke's wife with a translation and a statement:

"My dear Mrs. Gerecke,
Your husband, Pastor Gerecke, has been taking religious care of the undersigned… during the Nürnberg trial. He has been doing so for more than half a year. We have now heard, dear Mrs. Gerecke, that you wish to see him back home ... we understand this wish very well. Nevertheless we are asking you to put off your wish to gather your family around you. Please consider that we cannot miss your husband now. Our dear Chaplain Gerecke is necessary for us, not only as a pastor, but also as the thoroughly good man that he is. In this stage of the trial it is impossible for any other man than him to break through the walls that have been built up around us, in a spiritual sense even stronger than in a material one. Therefore please leave him with us. We shall be deeply indebted to you. We send our best wishes to you and your family. God be with you. "

Alma Gerecke then asked her husband to stay.

Sentences and executions

Before the judges announced their verdicts, Gerecke and O'Connor organized family visits for the prisoners. When asked by Gerecke, Edda Göring confessed that she would pray every night so that her father would “open his heart and let Jesus in”. Rosenberg's 13-year-old daughter was less friendly; When asked if he could do something for her, all she wanted from Gerecke was a cigarette. On October 1, 1946, the verdicts were pronounced. Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Frick, Sauckel and Rosenberg were sentenced to death . Of the Roman Catholic defendants, five out of six received the maximum sentence. After the verdict was announced, services were suspended for security reasons.

At around 8:30 p.m. the evening before the execution , Gerecke had his last conversation with Goering, before he was to be hanged first the next morning . In this conversation Goering asked for the Eucharist but denied the Christian faith. When Gerecke refused to do this because he did not recognize Christ as Savior, he only said: “I'll take my chances, my own way”. He then evaded the execution of the sentence that same night by suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule. The prison commandant Colonel Andrus instructed Gerecke to tell the other prisoners what Goering had done.

At 1 a.m., Ribbentrop was the first to be picked up. When he was led to the gallows , he told Gerecke that he trusted in Christ. After he was handcuffed, an American officer asked him for his last words. He replied: “I place all my confidence in the Lamb who made atonement for my sins. May God have mercy on my soul ” , turned to Gerecke and said: “ I'll see you again. ” Then a hood was pulled over his head and the trap door was opened . The execution of Keitel and Sauckel was similar. Frick said he came to believe that Christ washed away his sins. Alfred Rosenberg was the last of the Protestants to be executed. Gerecke asked if he should say a prayer for him. Rosenberg declined with thanks.

After Nuremberg and death

After the Nuremberg Trial, Henry Gerecke was promoted from captain to major . He left Germany on November 16, 1946 and returned to St. Louis, where he was appointed prison chaplain of the US Army Disciplinary Barracks in Milwaukee . He served there for 33 months until he was released from military service on July 1, 1950.

After serving in the army, he became pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Chester. In parallel, he was also responsible for 800 prisoners as a missionary at the Menard State Penitentiary . While driving to prison for a Bible study on October 11, 1961 , he suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 68.

aftermath

Gerecke reported publicly on his function in Nuremberg and wrote about his experiences in various church and other publications. The sources are now stored at the Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis, the archives of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod . Based on these reports, Frederick Grossmith († 2002) wrote the book The Cross and the Swastika , which appeared in 1984 and tells the story of the chaplain in Nuremberg. He also interviewed Albert Speer about this . The only academic evaluation of Gerecke's work was made by Nicholas M. Railton of the University of Ulster . The article he wrote about it, Henry Gerecke and the Saints of Nuremberg , was published in English in the scientific journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte in January 2000.

Around 2007-08, a 1938 New Testament edition arrived in the mail at a Los Angeles second-hand bookshop . On the last pages there were handwritten signatures from 19 defendants at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, including von Göring, von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, and Julius Streicher. Apparently, the prison guards started taking souvenirs from the defendants in exchange for cigarettes. According to the head of the antiquarian bookshop, it was most likely a jailer who bought the defendants a few cigarettes and received an autographed New Testament for them.

In contrast to Henry Gerecke, Sixtus O'Connor never reported on his experiences in Nuremberg. Gereckes motive was to keep the memory of it, even if he and O'Connor had died. In 2010, an illuminable cross was erected on the roof of St. John Lutheran Church in Chester in honor of Gerecke. The Gerecke Memorial Cross was dedicated on August 1, 2010.

See also

swell

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Jerusalem Post: The devils' Bible?
  2. ↑ My Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Des Teufels Advokat (Google Cache) ( Memento from March 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Gerecke, Henry F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gerecke, Henry Fred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant clergyman in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Gordonville , Missouri
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1961
Place of death Chester , Illinois