Andrea Tessarolo, scj
Martyrdom is not just a chapter of ancient history. Pope Wojtyla considers it a contemporary reality, one which he sees as being interwoven with his experience as a young worker, when he shared the dangers and the sufferings of his fellow workers; and also as being interwoven with his experience as a young priest, when he found himself in contact with the sacrifice made by so many men and women who, for their faith, risked losing their jobs, and some who also endured prison or risked being condemned to death. These are at the core of his insistence in urging that we reclaim the “memory” of the martyrs of our time.
Already, in the Encyclical, TMA, of 1996, one can read what he wrote. “In our century the martyrs have returned, many of them nameless, ‘unknown soldiers’ as it were of God’s great cause... at the end of the second millennium the Church has once again become the Church of martyrs...as far as possible, their witness should not be lost in the Church” (TM 37).
In response to this appeal, many local Churches set up a systematic search for authentic witnesses, and the Commission for New Martyrs was created in the Vatican. This Commission, by the beginning of the year 2000, had already collected evidence of more than 12,000 Christians who died for the faith during the 20th Century. A very important overview of these events can be found in “The Century of Martyrdom” by A. Riccardi (published by Mondadori 2000). This article is based on that publication.
The Pope once again returned to the subject within the context of the Great Jubilee, in particular with the solemn celebration at the Colosseum on May 7. On that occasion, with clearly ecumenical intent, he made a point of associating with the Christian martyrs of the first centuries all the Christian martyrs of our time (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) who, in prisons or in extermination camps, felt themselves united in their witness to the same faith and often discovered a truer and more fertile sense of ecumenism.
In this context the Pope could not forget the many other “anonymous martyrs”, victims of homicidal violence solely because they were of a different ethnic group or culture, or of a different political adherence; victims of persecutions unleashed with true ferocity by deranged and fanatical ideologies, such as Soviet communism in Russia and the racism of the National Socialists in Germany.
These two movements never cease to appall us for the ferocity of the persecutions which they unleashed and for the vast scale, truly enormous, of these persecutions. The first convulsed what was once “Holy Russia” with unceasing devastations and deportations; the second, which had as its hallmark the adoration of its “head”, had a program which included the physical elimination, the total extermination, of the Jewish people, not to mention the torments they were exposed to if they offered resistance to obeying his “word” blindly. Two shattering phenomena which left devastation and death in their wake; phenomena which were kept somewhat in the background by many so-called “intellectuals” who sometimes “clouded the issues” because they were incapable of clearly discerning the historical consequences of these events
The Pope reacted to this somewhat pharisaical silence by encouraging increased attention to these new martyrs. The historian, Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Saint Egidio in Rome, responded to this call and, using above all the documentation collected by the Vatican Commission for the “New Martyrs”, has given us the splendid volume entitled “The Century of Martyrdom”, which is described on the dust-jacket as “The Christian Holocaust” (Mondadori, Milan 2000).
This book does not aim to be another “history of the Church of the 20th Century”. It wishes only to preserve the memory of the many men and women who were killed in the 1900s just because they were “Christians”. The narration is wider and better documented for the two movements indicated above, but it then spreads over many countries of the world and through the different epochs of the 20th century, forming a vast and complex panorama of the entire phenomenon.
Here, we shall limit ourselves to dealing with the main characteristics of the religious persecutions in Russia and Germany, while for the other countries we will present a few essential facts.
The Soviet Century
After the introduction, the volume opens up immediately with the chapter on the “Soviet century”. The author does not mince words. He is very explicit. The anti-religious policy of the USSR did not aim so much at eliminating just a few abuses in the behavior of its citizens, but demonstrated from the start the precise determination to totally uproot every religious practice in society (p. 27). At all costs it was necessary to create the new Soviet man, one who was not allowed to have convictions or attitudes which were extraneous to the Soviet political culture. Religion was no longer considered a part of that culture; hence the necessity, according to Soviet policy, to eliminate every trace or sign of religion.
The instrument which the Bolsheviks had recourse to, in order to “purge” society from the influence of religion, was death. All those who believed in any religious faith were fair game, and the “party in power” amused itself by using them to give vent to its sadistic fury.
The figures of this wide spread butchery, which continued with differing degrees of intensity for over 70 years (from 1917 to 1989), are awesome. Almost all the monks, and especially all the priests ordained before 1917 or immediately afterwards, were subjected to persecution. And their torments were monstrous. Between 1917 and 1941, 300 Orthodox bishops were subjected to repressive measures, and more than 250 were executed. According to the Patriarchate of Moscow’s Commission for Rehabilitation, in the years leading up to 1941 there were 350,000 people who suffered repression for reasons of faith, 150,000 in 1937 alone, of whom 80,000 were shot (p. 34). According to Alexander Jakovlev, president of the Commission for Civil Rehabilitation, the members of the Orthodox clergy (priests and monks) who were condemned to death between 1917 and 1980 numbered 200,000. In 1937 and 1938 alone, 165,000 were arrested and 105,000 were shot. And no better fate was reserved for the Catholic priests and bishops, or those of other religious confessions. It should be noted however that these are somewhat general figures which demand deeper investigation; but, all the same, they suggest a veritable mass persecution and confirm a precise political choice on the part of the Soviet government: to annihilate the Church by eliminating its spiritual guides (p. 33). ‘Religion and Communism’, Bucharin declared, ‘are incompatible, both in theory and in practice’. For this reason the anti-religious struggle concerned every religion; it was a ‘decisive fight against the Pope, whether he is called pastor or priest or rabbi, patriarch or Holy Father; and this struggle must continue no less relentlessly against God, be He called Jehovah or Jesus or Buddha or Allah’ (p. 30).
During the period of the persecutions one of the places of greatest suffering for Russian believers was the island of Solovki, in the White Sea. It was known as the mother and the model of all the Soviet lagers. The punishment camp was created by adapting an ancient monastery complex of the 15th century, one of the most famous spiritual centers in the whole of Russia. Here, with its churches, icons and monks in prayer, everything spoke of God. This complex became one of the most terrible places of martyrdom in recorded history (p. 35). If, before the revolution, this holy monastery appeared to visitors as being a place “of fairy-tale beauty”, Olga Jafa, deported to that place 25 years later, describes it in this way: “In the evening the steamer reached Solovki. They took us on deck and after 25 years I saw that island of fairy-tale beauty once again. But, my God, how it had changed... Now there was not even one dome or one cross... But, in this dark grimness there was a kind of new, solemn beauty, perhaps even more elevated and inspired, one which spoke of a long and glorious past and of an end crowned with martyrdom... Solovki was now the kingdom of the wretched” (p. 35).
In this “kingdom of the wretched” life was also very hard because of the terrible polar climate. In 1920 the monastery had been equipped as a concentration camp for prisoners of the civil war. In 1923 it was transformed into a lager with a special purpose. From 1920 to 1929 it hosted over a million detainees; thus the great “sanctuary” became the final destination of a forced pilgrimage for bishops, priests, monks and lay people. The deported persons belonged to all religious confessions: the Mufti of the Mosque of Moscow, the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Georgia, the Catholic Exarch of Fedorov, etc. Even the apostolic administrator of the Armenian Rite Catholics, Msgr. Akop Karat’jan, ended up in that lager, accused of having created an anti-Soviet association and of having “celebrated theological (sic) and religious rites in secret”... (p. 36).
The bolsheviks wanted to transform that “sanctuary of obscurity” into a place where citizens who had committed crimes “would be re-educated” and woken up to a “new life”: that is what was written in the “Messaggero della Carelia”.
But the people in the camp continued to pray. In 1929 public celebrations were forbidden. It was not long before a priest had the idea of celebrating inside the hut, in the very low loft area, so low that one could only stay on one’s knees. Several priests went there every day... In this place of suffering a climate of fraternal relationships between the believers was created, even between Catholics and Orthodox, between Poles and Russians... A witness of those times jotted down some notes: “Joining forces, a still young Catholic bishop and an Orthodox bishop, old in years but strong in spirit, worked together... Those of us who will one day have the good fortune to return to the world will have to bear witness to what we are seeing now: ...the rebirth of the pure faith of the first Christians, the union of Churches in the persons of the Catholic and Orthodox bishops, a union in love and in humility” (p. 37).
As it was in Solovki, so it was in many other concentration camps which were spread over the most forsaken regions of Siberia: the persecutions went through different phases. One of the hardest periods started in 1922, when 6,000 people were involved in the repression; and in 1923 when there were 2,469 arrests. However, in 1931 and ‘32 there was recourse to a massive use of violence, one which caused numerous victims, above all among the ministers of the Orthodox Church, Catholics, Lutherans, Muslims and Buddhists.
There was a certain amount of breathing space during the Second World War, also in order to insure the fidelity of the army against the German invasion; then it recommenced, with Krushev, strangely enough in the years when there was a certain relaxation in the political field. However, even his figure soon disappeared like a meteor, and religious practice, although beset by many difficulties, gradually started up again.
We shall close this section on the persecutions due to Soviet communism by evoking the truly moving figure of Archbishop Josyf Slipiy, Metropolitan of Leopoli (in Western Ukraine). He had succeeded his predecessor, Andrej Szeptyckyi, who died on November 1, 1944, and only a few months later, in April 1945, he was imprisoned together with two other bishops, twenty priests, two deacons, three seminarians and five lay people.
He himself speaks of his imprisonment in Kiev in this way: “…I was subjected day and night to continual interrogations. I was reduced to such weakness that I literally could not stand up. As they took me from one judge to another they had to hold me up in order to stop me from falling to the ground... Certainly, hunger, lack of sleep and, above all, interminable and continuous interrogations can destroy a man or lead him to madness; and for me it was a true grace of God to have been able to resist these tortures”.
After being condemned to eight years of forced labor in Siberia, for Christmas 1954 he was able to write as follows to the faithful of his diocese: “Thousands of kilometers away from you, in the bitter cold of polar ice, how could I make my way through the gusts of snow? But a heart full of love knows no barriers or borders and, at least in thought, I fly above the eternal cold and the endless forests... to bring you the good news of the birth of Christ and arouse your enthusiasm for the feast to be celebrated... Meanwhile, let us put up with our sufferings and our anguish. Here, in this frozen tundra, I desire to offer to God, for all of you, my sacrifices and my pains, to raise to Him my prayers and find the right words, so that you, full of unshakable faith in the promise of Christ, may look at Him who shines in the manger, even if you may not be in church or in any other particular place” (p. 56).
Nazi Idolatry
Another black page in the anti-religious fight during the 20th Century was signed by the Nazis (the National Socialist German Workers’ Party). This party had Adolph Hitler as its leader and, as its ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, author of “The Myth of the 20th Century”. The fact that this movement was irreconcilable with the Christian faith was immediately made evident by the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs himself, Hans Kerrl, who, in 1937, declared: “The party places its foundation on positive Christianity, which is National Socialism... true Christianity is represented by the Party... the Fuhrer is the protagonist of a new revelation” (p. 63).
The Nazi anti-religious struggle began as soon as Hitler got into power (1933). It was expressed through the terrorism of the SS, which was not episodic but continuous and systematic, whose goal was to reach the point of physically eliminating all those who were considered obstacles to the party’s programs.
The event (against a rival party) which occurred on June 30, 1934, called “the night of the long knives”, furnished the pretext for starting the elimination of the most obvious Catholics and decreed the suppression of all the free press and of religious instruction in schools. In addition, a decree was issued for “the defense of the party and of the State”. This decree, in fact, authorized every arbitrary act committed against the citizens. House searches, violence, arrests, deportations and death sentences followed one after the other, and continued without interruption from that time until the death of the regime in May 1945.
Most notable were the arbitrary deportations of citizens considered suspect, and above all the mass deportations of Jews from Warsaw, from Prague, from Vienna, from Rome... deportations which culminated in the so-called “holocaust” (“Shoa”), with the elimination of millions of people, above all Jews, in the notorious gas chambers.
In the struggle against the Catholic Church, rather than having recourse to ideological motivations, Hitler preferred to promote scandal campaigns, accusing priests and religious of sexual abuses, or of having violated the law on the traffic of foreign currency, as was Fr. Stanislaus Loh, S.C.J. Provincial, who was condemned and died in prison in 1941 (Cf. p. ).
Nazism, by making its leader and its race divine, exceeded the limits of any nationalism, even the most fervent. In this regard, the statements of a German nurse are significant, she took part in the medical experiments in the camp of Dachau and gave the lethal injection of phenolic acid to the Dutch Carmelite, Tito Brandma. This is what she said: “When I was sixteen I went to Berlin as a Red Cross nurse. There we had to swear that we considered Hitler as our God and we had to sign that we would never go to Church again... All the Jews were to be exterminated. this was the beginning of our training” (p. 65).
The Nazi neo-paganism immediately roused anxiety in the Catholic bishops. Among those who made their voice of protest heard, speaking out against such an iniquitous regime, we should above all remember Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich, the Archbishop of Berlin,, von Preysing, von Galen, etc. Pope Pius XI, in his 1937 encyclical “Mit brennender Sorge”, declared that the deification of the race and of the State was irreconcilable with Christian faith. The following year, when he was in Castelgandolfo, where he had withdrawn during the days of Hitler’s visit to Italy, he expressed his sadness at seeing, in Rome, “the banner of another cross, one which is not the cross of Christ”.
We must remember that the Catholic clergy in Germany, during those years, was among the most persecuted of the social groups. In the twelve years of Hitler’s regime, 12,000 priests were subjected to threats or persecution. In the diocese of Paderborn, of 1,400 ecclesiastics, 868 came into conflict with the Nazi party: 67 of them spent many years in prison, 23 were interned in concentration camps. The same thing happened at Treviri... Recently a “martyrology” of the German Church of the 20th Century has also been published. It tells us of a 164 priests, 60 religious, 6 persons of consecrated life, and 118 lay people who lost their lives under nazism because of their faith.
In spite of the weakness of many Christians in the face of nazism, who gave in because of fear or for ignoble “ladder-climbing”, there was no lack, all the same, of courageous individuals who were, and who remain for all, a warning sign and an example.
Particularly notable was the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhöffer, who did not hesitate to protest publicly, even against his own Church, because they, having ceded to party pressure, had accepted the “Aryan paragraph” on the law on racism. Anti-semitism, for Bonhöffer, was an absurdity; he wrote: “The exclusion of the faithful of Jewish race from our Church... is always impossible from the evangelical point of view”. He, who bore witness to public resistance, to racism and to the “treachery of the Church”, was killed by hanging in 1945, after a farcical trial. The doctor who was present at the execution declared: “In my nearly 50 years of medical practice, I have never seen a man die in such a resigned manner” (p. 76).
Another emblematic figure is certainly the Provost of the Berlin Cathedral, Bernard Lichtenberg. His preaching bore constant witness to his resistance against nazism from 1933 until his death. President of the League for Peace of the German Catholics, he denounced the Nazis even before they got into power. Because of this fact Goebbels marked him down for lynching, his reaction was to accuse Goebbels of defamation... In 1935, when he learned what was happening in the lager of Esterwegen, he presented himself in person to the head of the Gestapo, in order to hand him a note of protest... The day after “Crystal Night” (a Nazi attack against the Jews), the police encircled the cathedral in order to be ready to counter any possible initiative on the part of the outspoken provost. But he could not remain silent before such misdeeds, and the evening afterwards he started public prayer by saying: “What yesterday was we know of. What will be tomorrow we do not know. But what happened today we have seen: out there the synagogue is burning; that too is the house of God” (p. 77).
Arrested in 1941 and imprisoned, during his trial he declared that he intended to obey God rather than men. He affirmed that the deportation of the Jews was irreconcilable with Christian morality and asked to be able to go with them. He publicly announced the violence he suffered in the Nazi prison. Then he added: “It was a period rich with grace, behind the walls of the jail. I thank God... that I was not forced to succumb to desperation. There are in fact hours in which even a priest is tempted to despair” (p. 78). After two more years of harsh imprisonment, Lichtenberg died of privation on November 3, 1943, while he was being transferred to Dachau.
On various occasions, and also in very different situations, it has been seen that witness to the faith has associated together Christians of all confessions in martyrdom. This is the case, for example, of the four clergy who, in the spring of 1942, were imprisoned in Lubecca. Karl Friedrich Stellbrink, a Lutheran pastor, was arrested for his preaching. Together with him one of his friends was also taken, Johannes Prassek, assistant parish priest of the Sacred Heart. Two more priests from the same parish were subsequently arrested. In July 1943 they were all condemned to death and, while the execution was taking place they cried out: “To Christ, our King, eternal fidelity!”. Along with them we must also remember M. J. Metzger, pioneer of ecumenism, as well as the animators of the anti-Nazi resistance movement: “White Rose”, among whom figured Catholics, Protestants and also someone from the Orthodox Church. They were beheaded in 1944 because ecumenism was considered an obstacle to nazism.
An important witness to ecumenism was also given by the Italian priest, Roberto Angeli. In the recounting of his experiences in Barrack 26 of the camp in Dachau, he writes: “...in the midst of Catholic priests from every country, Protestant pastors and Orthodox popes, all priests pure and simple - without powers, decorations or privileges - worn down by hunger and cold, tortured by fleas and by fear, with no dignity other than that invisible one of the priesthood, we learned to discover the essence of life and of faith” (p. 75).
The Persecution continues…
The two maxi-persecutions which we have briefly recalled, that of the bolsheviks and that of the Hitler regime, were felt by many of us in a particularly close way, and the people of a certain age still have a vivid memory of them. But the phenomenon was not exhausted within the confines of Russia and Germany. During the Second World War (1939-1945), with the military occupation of neighboring countries to the west and to the east, the Nazis also brought their attitude of persecution with them, both against the Jews and against the Catholic Church. We cannot spend much time going into details. However, with regard to Poland, for example, we cannot forget the 108 Polish martyrs who were beatified by John Paul II in Warsaw on June 13, 1999. Another Polish name which has become a symbol for the whole people of God, is that of Saint Maximillian Kolbe, a voluntary martyr of charity.
When the war was over in 1945, the Nazi persecution in East Europe was followed by the Communist persecution; for all those countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic States, etc.) a new Calvary began. For an idea of what the religious situation was in those countries, while in Rome Vatican II was being celebrated, we can sum up by mentioning the names of a few bishops:
- Alojzije Stepinac, frequently imprisoned, (he died in Zagabria in 1959);
- Jozsef Mindszenty, Archbishop of Esztergom, Hungary (his rights were taken away in 1961);
- Jozsef Beran, Archbishop of Prague, Czechoslovakia (in 1961 he disappeared to an unknown place);
- Stefan Wyszynski, Archbishop of Warsaw, Poland (he maintained a powerful tension with the communist government).
Another case, also connected to the communist and anarchical ideology which exploded in the 30s, anomalous since it took place in a country which was traditionally very Catholic, seems to be the religious persecutions in Spain. We shall return to this subject when we present the first S.C.J. blessed, Juan Maria de la Cruz and his fellow martyrs.
Martyrdom and the Missions
In the history of martyrdom much space should be given to the persecutions which took place during the 20th century in countries to which missionaries were sent. An emblematic case is the one whose first centenary was celebrated just when those first “blessed” of the third millennium were being proclaimed in Rome (cf. Observatory Romano, March 12, 2001, p. 4). This was the case of the martyrs of the diocese of Alto Alegre (Brazil), the first martyrs of the 20th century: 4 Capuchin missionaries from the province of Lombardy, 7 nuns from M. Rubatto and over 200 faithful, all massacred near the city of Alto Alegre in 1901 by a group of Indios of various tribes...
In this case, as in many others of the 20th century, the issue of martyrdom is a frontier issue. It is often linked, if not indeed identified, with movements of a political character, united because they are against colonialism or because they are aiming for independence. Often, in fact, the missions, which at the beginning of the 20th century were promoted by European nations, were supported by governments which were aiming to extend their colonial or commercial power. And, even if the Vatican often urged missionaries to abstain from every political involvement, the circumstances were not always very clear.
This was the situation which was certainly prevailing in China with their first group of “martyrs” of the 20th century. Various European powers, on the pretext of defending their own citizens, had each opened their own “delegation” in Peking. But this was also a way to try to introduce western culture, commerce, political and economic power... The explosion of the Chinese reaction, even of the masses, was violent. It was like a people’s revolution against “European penetration”. It was called the “Boxer Revolution”. In addition to the siege of foreign delegations, there were assassination attempts against Europeans, but more often against missionaries and against those Chinese Christians themselves who gathered around the missions. In this revolt the following people met their death: 5 bishops, 31 European religious, over 100 Chinese religious, approximately 190 Protestant pastors and their families, and over 30,000 Chinese faithful, above all Catholics. They were Christians who were bearing witness to their faith at the cost of their life, since the imperial edict of July 1, 1900 contained a clear indication that the Chinese who were prepared to abjure their faith would be saved.
These events had very negative consequences for many years, and the situation was further aggravated by the Japanese occupation which lasted from 1937 to 1945. We shall speak of this again in connection with the S.C.J. martyrs of Sumatra.
There is not enough space to describe the situation in China and the nearby countries from 1950 on, the 6000 Christians killed at Chejou (Korea) in 1901, the Christian martyrs of Oceania in 1904, the massacre of the missionaries of PIME in 1941, etc. etc. A separate account should also be written about the martyrs of the African countries, where persecutions habitually exploded in the context of struggles for independence (see the paragraph on the S.C.J. martyrs in the Congo). But, for a complete panorama of the persecutions and martyrdom in the five continents, we recommend the excellent volume by A. Riccardi, which is extremely well documented.
Memory and Prophecy
The study of the persecutions and the witness made by the martyrs has brought to the surface a hidden face of contemporary Christianity. Sometimes the stories are simple and other times they are very complex; this is because of the fact that they are directly connected with the way of life of the people involved. They are very personal stories, taking place in different countries and at different moments; they are, therefore, very different from each other. However, they all join together to paint one single, great fresco; one which tells of the sufferings and the hopes which characterize and animate the believing men and women of our times.
We might also wonder how they lived their various situations and what were the feelings in their heart....
Faced with this vast universe which we have indicated, one single interpretation of the moral or religious resistance of the martyrs in these inhuman places is unthinkable. Rare incidents of witness suggest the existence of a profound spiritual life, one that was lived alongside grievous situations of desperate degradation. However, we see that the call for “hope” is what prevails.
One of the most well known victims of the Bolshevik persecutions was the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Veniamin. In his last letter, written from prison to his substitute, one can read: “The possibility of suffering for the love of Christ has appeared... Suffering is hard, heavy, but in relation to how much we suffer there is the same level of a super abundance of divine consolation... It is difficult to cross this Rubicon and entrust oneself totally to the will of God. However, when this happens, man is filled to overflowing with consolation” (p. 40).
The story of the Christian martyrs is truly a story of weakness and of victory. “It is precisely in conditions of great weakness that these Christians have demonstrated a particular strength of spiritual and moral character. They have renounced neither their faith nor their convictions, in the service of others or in that of the Church, in order to safeguard their own life and insure their survival. They have manifested a great strength, even in conditions of extreme weakness and great risk. This is a reality of the history of Christianity. It is on this reality that the Christian of the 21st century is called to reflect; and also to garner what this ‘strength’ of Christianity is”.
In summary, the reflection on martyrdom has meaning to the extent in which one lets oneself be illuminated by the mystery of the dead and risen Christ. The memory of the martyrs for the Church is not a “book of heros” but the story of many Christian existences lived in faith, cut down by violence, illuminated by theological hope.
The testimony, with which Riccardi concludes the introduction to his volume “The History of Martyrdom”, is very evocative. It speaks of the priest André Jarlan, who fell in Chile in 1984 during a shootout by the police in a lower class quarter of Santiago: “He was found with his head leaning on the Bible which he had been reading, open at Psalm 130: ‘Out of the depths I call to you, Lord, hear my cry...’. André Jarlan had exposed his life to risk, sharing the grave situation of tension which existed in the district where he lived. One of his last letters well illustrates the idea that the Christian has of life itself, a life which leads towards martyrdom: ‘those who bring life are those who offer their lives, not those who take it from others’, he had written. ‘For us the resurrection is not a myth but a true reality. This event, which we celebrate in every Eucharist, confirms for us that it is worthwhile to give one’s life for others and commits us to do so’”.