From a Berlin diary |
23rd January 1945 Day of the Holy Raymund |
Today ten men died as "Martyrs for the other Germany". "Their last walk to the gallows was distressing and devastating", Prison chaplain Buchholz reports. As always SS and Gestapo have appeared in great numbers to witness the spectacle of the execution in Plötzensee. A priest is not allowed to speak with these outcasts in their last hour. However chaplain Buchholz has persons of his confidence. He has been informed in time. Quickly he has come and he hides - as he has done several times before - in a corner from where he can observe the sad procession of those doomed for death. Upright and calmly they walk to the gallows. Chaplain Buchholz blesses every one of them. Receiving the blessing Nikolaus Groß silently bows his head. His face seems already inspired by the glory which he now accedes. Count Moltke says quietly: "Farewell in heaven, chaplain radiant as somebody who goes to his wedding". Eugen Bolz had been reprieved. His sentence had been commuted to death by decapitation. Chaplain Buchholz was able to sneak into his cell at the very last moment. The condemned man knelt down and asks for the blessing, with which he receives the absolution in this moment of the highest danger. Calmly and urgently he then says: "Please greet my wife and my daughter and tell them and everyone that I die for Germany."
To our greatest horror chaplain Buchholz saw in today`s death procession also a man (Erwin Planck) walk quietly to the gallows, who had been sentenced, but who was not supposed to be executed. That was an open secret. In consideration for his venerable father, a scientist with a worldwide reputation he was to be spared the execution. What may have happened? A mistake? Revenge? The father and the poor wife will not know.
Yet another secret clouds this hard day: Father Delp, Dr. Hermes and also Dr. Steltzer, sentenced to death at the same time with the others, were not in today`s death procession. Are they still alive? Will they have to face new pains, other ordeals? Does God want to save them miraculously?
Quoted according to : Marianne Hapig: "Alfred Delp/Kämpfer, Beter, Zeuge", Morus Verlag Berlin, 3. Auflage, 1978, S. 97f