[Verrieres]

Hi,
Heres a brief tale of a priest in the German Army Father Josef Perau who was reported to have kept a detailed diary of his thoughts and service;-

On June 13, 1940 Father Josef Perau was conscripted into a medical unit as part of general call ups, as the Concordat (agreement between the Apostolic See and a government of a certain country on religious matters) between the Vatican and the Nazi state stipulated. The Unit was composed of "doctors, pharmacists, barbers, Red Cross workers, theologians, and priests."For 12 months Perau served in Danzig, Riesenburg, and Ghent, primarily in the various military hospitals in those areas

As a Priest he found life in this situation difficult he is reported to have kept adiary and recorded his feelings of oppression by his officers and wished for a posting to a combat unit where he felt he could have more impact on the frontline soldiers.
A call to Berlin for a chaplain training course in July 1941 ended this period of Josef Perau's service. At the time, he was excited at the prospect of ministering to the troops, but unaware of the hard times which lay ahead. After leaving Berlin he was posted to a military hospital in Tomaszow on the Eastern Front

. The entries during this period, immediately before his deployment to the eastern front, display a great deal about Perau's perception of himself as a chaplain, and what he thought the role of a chaplain should be. He expressed discomfort with the concept of wearing a uniform so similar to that of the SS; he clearly disliked the SS, He reacted with "discomfort and sorrow" to the fact that he could be mistaken for an SS officer His new position had its draw backs his primary objection was that the chaplain was armed and carried the title Kriegspfarrer, literally war-pastor,

Over the course of the next year Perau served at a number of different military hospitals on the eastern front, mostly in Russia and Ukraine, but also in Poland as well. In this period he was first forced to come to terms with the atrocities being committed . Perau states that when speaking to Russian families he was ashamed to be German and he often repeated his desire that other nations would know that not all Germans were Nazis , in an especially troubled entry he recounted his thoughts upon seeing a mass grave of Russian prisoners in Roslwal:
“The guard tells me there are already about 19,000 therein…I look over the edge of the grave and see many layers of tangled corpses with wide eyes and clenched hands--a terrible accusation.”
Perau continued noting the tales of epidemic disease in the camps and cannibalism on account of hunger Josef Perau certainly shared the Nazis' distaste for Bolshevism. It was, for him, a fearful concept because it was utterly Godless, a destroyer of lives and communities He was afraid that if the Russians won, then " the complete annihilation" of the church would .be complete In contrast, he had no qualms with Slavic people themselves. While in Poland Perau noted his respect for the Poles' "deeply rooted Christianity," and was impressed by the intelligence of captured Russian soldiers. Perau admired the desire of the Slavic peoples for Christianity, be it Greek Orthodox or Catholic. Perau also reported a "brotherly relationship" with Polish priests he met in the latter days of the war. For the next two years Perau moved between a number of different military units on the Eastern Front. In May 1942 Perau was assigned to the front; his initial reaction was negative, not wanting to leave the "stable life of the hospital and the mass to the chaos of war." Perau clearly now feared working at the front; He became increasingly depressed towards the end of the war. . He was exceedingly disenchanted in August 1944, when his unit suffered great losses as it retreated; Perau called these casualties "worthless blood sacrifices" and was fairly certain that Germany had lost the war He also recorded only seeing other chaplains rarely or not at all.s not surprising due to Goebbels' 1942 order that the vacancies within the chaplaincy would no longer be filled After February, 1943 Himmler and Hitler insisted that all army chaplains become grenadiers, otherwise they would be dismissed. The news filtered back to the front of the large scale executions of so called deserters and he records privately how he rejoiced when they heard the news of Hitler's death, noting that he was thankful for "that life which is newly given to us," but kept these feelings to himself as "such words were still very dangerous.Josef Perau spent a short time in an Allied prisoner of war camp at the end of the war.Father Josef Perau died in 2006


Regards
Verrieres