Last Priest from Dachau Concentration Camp Dies at 102

[rug]

Father Hermann Scheipers survived Nazis and communists in long career



John Burger
June 14, 2016

The last Catholic priest to have been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp has died at age 102.

Father Hermann Scheipers was a young priest in 1940 when he was arrested by the Nazis and taken to the camp, near Munich. Dachau had a large population of priests: some 95% of the 2,720 clergymen imprisoned there were Catholic.

Father Scheipers died June 2 in Ochtrup in Münsterland, the same town where he was born on July 24, 1913.

His work among young people, soon after his ordination, drew the attention of the Nazis. An obituary at KNA, a German Catholic news agency, translated by Mark de Vries, noted:

Because he was sympathetic with Polish forced laborers, celebrated Mass with them and heard their confessions, he was arrested [in] October of 1940 and brought to Dachau five months later. His file, which he came across by chance, states the true reason for his arrest: “Scheipers is a fanatical proponent of the Catholic Church and thus likely to cause unrest among the population.”

http://aleteia.org/2016/06/14/last-priest-from-dachau-concentration-camp-dies-at-102/