Nazi war criminals turned to Christ

A rogues’ gallery of Nazi war criminals turned to Jesus for salvation in the weeks before their deaths, according to an account of the Nuremberg trials that emerged in the wake of Holocaust Memorial Day.

The reports of the likes of Chief of Slave Labour Fritz Sauckel, propaganda chief Hans Fritzsche, Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach and Armaments Minister Albert Speer repenting for their roles in the Holocaust have been uncovered by Jewish Christian writer Charles Gardner.

Better-known figures from the brutal regime such as Rudolf Hess and Hermann Göring still shunned Jesus even at the point of death, reports Gardner in his account of Frederick Grossmith’s book The Cross and the Swastika, but Göring reportedly “sang with gusto” from the front row during 70 church services.

The book, based on the experiences of US Army chaplain Major Henry Gerecke, comes from accounts deemed so sensitive they were censored by the US government for five years.

Gerecke, a 52-year-old Lutheran pastor from St Louis, Missouri, was assigned to the spiritual care of 15 Nazi leaders during the nine-month-long trials of 1945–46. A Roman Catholic colleague had pastoral care over another six on trial at Nuremberg.

Gerecke was reluctant to take on his role; two of his sons were badly injured in World War II and he had to fight a revulsion for the perpetrators of such barbaric war crimes. Eventually he accepted it as a special calling for which he needed a full measure of the grace of Jesus, coming to hate the sin but love the sinner.

According to Gardner, Gerecke “dedicated himself to visiting each of the men in their cell on a regular basis and inviting them to chapel services at which he would preach the gospel of how Jesus died for sinners like them.”

Hess and Göring apart, most of the others gave their lives to Christ.

... story continues