Description
“Protestant pastors in the Mauthausen concentration camp” is the subject of a new book published by the Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe and the Lutheran Church in Austria.
The book is an initiative of the former CPCE General Secretary and Bishop Michael Bünker, who published it together with historian Dietlind Pichler. It presents the life stories of 37 men from several European countries who were imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp and some of whom were also murdered there. In the account, Mauthausen becomes a European memorial site of National Socialist terror and at the same time a point of reference for Protestant churches when they describe their relationship to National Socialism.
190,000 people were imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp and its numerous subcamps. 90,000 of them died. These enormous numbers make us aware of the extent of the National Socialist reign of terror. The criminal contempt for humanity also included taking away people’s identities and turning them into anonymous numbers. An important step in commemoration is therefore to give the victims of the crimes, the murdered as well as the survivors, their names and (wherever possible) their faces again and to recall their life fates.
Many of the Protestant pastors portrayed in this book have a firm place in the collective memory of their country and their church. Beyond the national (inner-church) culture of remembrance, however, they are largely unknown. The compilation of this volume takes the persons out of their national context and places them in the unifying context of European Protestantism.
€ 32,00 inkl. MwSt., 186 pages, 17 x 24 cm, Softcover, ISBN 978-3-85073-330-4.
