The Priest Barracks: Dachau, 1938-1945 by Guillaume Zeller

Paperback: Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them. - Hebrews 13:3

At the Nazi concentration camp Dachau, three barracks out of thirty were occupied by clergy from 1938 to 1945. The overwhelming majority of the 2,720 men imprisoned in these barracks were Catholics--2,579 priests, monks, and seminarians from all over Europe. More than a third of the prisoners in the priest block died there.

The story of these men, which has been submerged in the overall history of the concentration camps, is told in this riveting historical account. Both tragedies and magnificent gestures are chronicled here--from the terrifying forced march in 1942 to the heroic voluntary confinement of those dying of typhoid to the moving clandestine ordination of a young German deacon by a French bishop. Besides recounting moving episodes, the book sheds new light on Hitler's system of concentration camps and the intrinsic anti-Christian animus of Nazism.

How does the experience of the priests at Dachau compare to those of their comrades who were laymen?

What were their privileges and what were their particular sufferings?

Did the persecution undertaken by the Nazis against the clergy have ideological or political underpinnings?

Did the faith and religious commitment of the priests reinforce them or render them helpless against the methodical dehumanization undertaken in the camps?

Were their moral convictions, forged by the Gospel and the Tradition of the Church, able to resist the perversion of values imposed by the SS?

Did the sufferings endured by the priests at Dachau bear fruit within the ecclesiastical institution and also outside, at the peripheries of the Church?

Recounting this strange story, this fragment of the tragedy of the concentration camps, allows us to outline answers to these various questions. 

The Priest Barracks (2017) was published on the recommendation of Jean-Louis Thiériot and is translated from the French (La baraque des prêtres: Dachau, 1938-1945 (2015)) by Michael J Miller. 

About the author: Guillaume Zeller is a French journalist. He is the former editor in chief of I-Télé, a national news television channel in France. His other two historical books are Un prêtre à la guerre about a French paratrooper chaplain and Oran, 5 juillet 1962 about the Algerian War.