The Cross and the Swastika by FT Grossmith Word Publishing, 1988 125 pages out of print
ISBN 978 0 850 091 526
The author presents an unusual insight and perspective on the Nuremberg trials held after the end of the Second World War.
This is the story of Major Henry Gerecke, an American army chaplain who, because he had fluent German, was assigned (after a personal struggle) to be a spiritual adviser or counsellor to some of the most senior members of Hitler’s evil regime arraigned before the international court in 1945.
Unusually, this book relates very little of the court sessions but rather relates the meetings of Major Gerecke, a Lutheran minister, with Goring, Hess, Keitel, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Donitz, Raeder, von Neurath, Frick, Schacht, Funk, Speer, von Schirach, and Fritsche. Other Catholic prisoners were put in the pastoral care of a Roman Catholic priest, Sixtus O’Connor.
We are given a very brief account of the prisoners background and how each came to be involved in Hitler’s murderous regime.
The meetings between Padre Gerecke and the prisoners are described in sufficient detail to show that most had some understanding of the error of their ways and were receptive to the Christian gospel – most that is, except for Hess and Rosenberg who were steadfastly opposed to any talk of religion.
Gerecke managed to arrange for services to be held in the prison chapel and for communion to be celebrated. Most prisoners were more than glad to attend. He also studied the Bible individually with some prisoners in their cells.
Clearly, Henry Gerecke had a warm, pastoral heart and he made meaningful relationships with the people to whom he ministered. So much so, in fact, that when, in 1946, runours were circulating that older army officers were to be sent home, if they so wished, all 21 prisoners signed a letter to Gerecke’s wife in America, pleading with her to let her husband stay with them, writing
“…as he had shown us such uncompromising friendliness of such a kind that we cannot do without him in these surroundings…”
You can read much about the Nuremberg trials; none can be as engrossing or heart-warming as the stories told here.