Josef Knichel

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Josef Knichel (born February 10, 1889 in Brohl am Rhein, † October 14, 1955 in Wallhausen (Nahe)) was a Catholic pastor and, due to his political resistance during the Nazi era, a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp .

Life

Origin and education

Josef Knichel was a son of the railway station master Johann Knichel from Staudernheim . He passed the humanistic Abitur on March 23, 1908 in Trier, then entered the Trier seminary and was ordained a priest on August 1, 1912. As a chaplain he worked in Burbach near Saarbrücken , where he opposed the visitation of religious education by the state school board in the spirit of the culture war . In 1921 Knichel received the parish of Lauschied in the Hunsrück , and in 1927 that of Stadtkyll in the Eifel .

time of the nationalsocialism

Josef Knichel was politically active in the German Center Party and was therefore taken in March 1933 by members of the Stahlhelm from Hallschlag in the Eifel, and later by the dentist Dr. W. from Daleiden u. a. Denounced at the Trier Vicariate General for disparaging the government . Since he continued to speak out against the NSDAP , he was also reported to the public prosecutor . His case came before the special court in Cologne that for sedition was investigating him. Knichel escaped his arrest by the Secret State Police by fleeing to St. Vith in the Belgian Ardennes . The Vicariate General in Trier advised him to wait for the special court proceedings, but Knichel asked the Bishop of Liège for a recommendation for use in the Diocese of Liège . Although the Bishop of Liège asked his brother in Trier to be allowed to entrust a Liège parish to Knichel, he did not give up his Eifel parish in Stadtkyll for the time being, but hired a parish administrator at his own expense . When requests for mercy from the Stadtkyller parishioners in Cologne also failed, Trier agreed to Knichel's work in the Diocese of Liège in August. Knichel became parish administrator of Ligneuville near Malmedy . On September 2, 1933, the Cologne Regional Court issued an arrest warrant for denigrating the state boycott of Jews from the pulpit, for the statement that the Jews in Germany were being mistreated, that SS and SA were military organizations, that German youth were raised to genocide and that the Nazis were in the Reichstag Had set fire , further because of insulting the Führer and the Reich President (§ 130a, 188, 200 StGB , § 3 Heimtückegesetz , § 74 StGB). On June 7, 1938, the proceedings against Knichel were discontinued on the basis of Section 2 of the Law on Granting Impunity of April 30, 1938. Since he also expressed himself politically in Ostbelgien, which was strongly influenced by the right-wing extremist Léon Degrelle , Knichel had to flee again when the Wehrmacht invaded Belgium on May 10, 1940 ( western campaign ). An arrest team did not find him at home. He apparently first went into hiding in the diocese of Liège, but then settled in unoccupied France . Betrayed by the French, Knichel was arrested by the Gestapo in Paris on July 24, 1943, along with Bishop Gabriel Piguet of Clermont-Ferrand and another 24 clergy . He was tried and sentenced to death.

captivity

Since August 7, 1943, Knichel had been in " protective custody " in Aachen's Adalbertsteinweg 92 prison , where he was severely mistreated. The prison was badly damaged in a large air raid. Not only were many of the prisoners killed, but the files were also burned. As a result, Knichel got away with his life and was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp on May 27, 1944 , where he arrived on June 5 as inmate 69.815 in block 26/3, the so-called pastor's block . Letters and receipts were sent to his family from here and from Aachen , in which Knichel described his situation. After the liberation by the Americans on April 29, 1945, Knichel and his fellow sufferers were released (from quarantine) on May 26.

post war period

Knichel returned to Ligneuville on June 1, 1945. On May 30th, 1949 he turned to the bishop of his home diocese, Franz Rudolf Bornewasser , as "what it seems like a forgotten son of the Diocese of Trier" . The vicar general Heinrich von Meurerss apologized on June 22, 1949 with the concealed filing of the Nazi era and asked him to return to a Trier parish. It was not until September 15, 1950 that Knichel decided to take over the Bergweiler parish near Wittlich . Seriously ill, he retired on October 1, 1954. After brief service as a chaplain in the old people's home in Bad Salzig , the little monastery, he retired to his family in Wallhausen (near Bad Kreuznach) , where he died on October 14, 1955. He is buried in the local cemetery.

The Wallhausen community has honored him on a "memorial plaque for the victims of National Socialism".

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Knichel, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Brohl , Rhine Province , Kingdom of Prussia , German Empire (today: Rhineland-Palatinate )
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 1955
Place of death Wallhausen , Rhineland-Palatinate , Federal Republic of Germany