The memory of Prelate Lichtenberg, provost of a Catholic cathedral in Berlin, who went to jail under the Nazis and later perished in the Dachau concentration camp because he prayed publicly “for the persecuted Jews,” was honored today by the Jewish community here in a letter sent to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Berlin.
Prelate Lichtenberg, profoundly shaken by the pogroms and synagogue burnings in November 1938 announced–alone of all the clergymen in Germany–during services: “And now let us pray for the persecuted non-Aryan Christians and for the persecuted Jews!” Gallantly, he also countered anti-Jewish incitement by the Nazi Party with a call to the faithful “not to be led astray and to remember the Commandment that Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
He made it a regular practice to offer public prayers on behalf of the Jews, but it was 1941 before the Nazis dared to arrest the widely beloved priest. The following year, after telling a Nazi court that he stood by his utterances, he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for “abuse of the pulpit and malicious attacks upon the state.”
Knowing that the Gestapo would not let him return to his parish, he offered to leave Berlin and to enter the Lodz ghetto “there to render spiritual assistance to the Jews and to share their suffering.” He pleaded with the then Roman Catholic Bishop of Berlin, Cardinal Count Preysing, to secure the Pope’s approval. As the end of his sentence approached, he again sought to prevail upon the Nazi authorities to let him go to Lodz.
The Nazis did not release Nassim when his jail sentence was concluded. Instead, they shipped him to Dacha concentration camp. Wracked by sickness as he was, his body could not stand the rigors of the transport. He succumbed upon arrival at the camp.
The Community in its letter, thanked the Catholic Church in the name of Jews and Nazi victims. Paying tribute to the memory of Father Lichtenberg, it expressed the hope that the ideals of this heroic churchman would remain alive.
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