Linz Bishop and Protestant Bishop Chalupka celebrated an ecumenical service in the chapel of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial
Linz (KAP) – The Christian churches commemorated the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945 by US troops with an ecumenical service. A total of around 200,000 people were imprisoned in the camp and its 49 subcamps – at least 90,000 of whom were murdered by the National Socialists.
The service on Sunday morning in the memorial chapel was presided over by Linz Bishop Manfred Scheuer together with the Protestant Bishop Michael Chalupka. A representative of Orthodoxy was missing because the Orthodox churches, which follow the Julian calendar, celebrate Easter on May 5th. The service also marked the start of the memorial service, which this year had the theme “Law and Justice in National Socialism” and was attended by thousands of people – including Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen.
Scheuer: Rightly against tyranny and arbitrariness
In his sermon, Bishop Scheuer emphasized the importance of law in curbing power, arbitrariness and inhumanity. “It is not the injustice of the stronger, but the strength of the law that must apply,” said Scheuer. Wherever the law is denigrated or suspected, it is important to be vigilant, the bishop warned. “Freedom without rights is anarchy and therefore the destruction of freedom. The opposite of right is not love, but injustice.”
National Socialism bent the law and replaced human rights with the law of the strongest. The result was mistreatment, threats, deportations, internment and extermination of disabled people, Jews and others. Law and the rule of law, on the other hand, are “in strict contrast to tyranny and arbitrariness” – and therefore need to be defended all the more today.
Bishop Chalupka also emphasized the importance of law in his address. National Socialism carried out a “politicization of the law” “in order to underpin the dictatorship”. The bishop also recalled that the right to freedom of worship was also revoked in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Prayer and pastoral care were considered acts of resistance – a regulation that made Mauthausen stand out even among the other concentration and extermination camps of the Third Reich, according to Chalupka.
Commemoration of resistance fighters
René Lescoute (1920-1945) and Jean Cayrol (1911-2005) were remembered at the service on behalf of the people imprisoned in Mauthausen. Both were involved in the resistance movement in France:
Lescoute, born in South Africa, came from a family that was involved in the reformed “Mission de Paris”. He studied Protestant theology at the University of Montpellier and in 1943 joined a resistance group in the mountains near Grenoble. The group was betrayed and arrested on October 19, 1943. Lescoute was sentenced to death by a military court in Lyon, but was surprisingly pardoned in January 1944. He reached Mauthausen in April 1944 via several camps. Already severely weakened physically, he initially had to do work in Mauthausen itself and in the Linz III subcamp, and finally in the Ebensee location building tunnels. He didn’t think twice about this mission; he died there on January 28, 1945.
Cayrol, born in Bordeaux in 1911, a librarian and writer by profession, was arrested by the Paris security police after a long period of work for the Catholic resistance group Confrérie Notre-Dame and deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp at the end of March 1943. Just a few days after his arrival he was transferred to the Gusen camp. After more than six months of torturous work in the quarry, he was completely exhausted. He received help from the Catholic priest Johann Gruber, also known as “Papa” Gruber, who, as a prisoner functionary in the Gusen camp, had set up a support network for fellow prisoners and organized additional food. Gruber himself was murdered on April 7, 1944 in Gusen, Cayrol wrote texts in secret and later dedicated the volume of poems “Poèmes de la nuit et du brouillar” (Night and Fog) to Gruber. Cayrol survived and published a selection of his texts in 1997 under the title “Alerte aux ombres”. They were published in German in 2019 under the title “Schattenalarm”.
“Festival of Joy” on Heroes’ Square
On Wednesday, May 8th, the 79th anniversary of the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht, the “Festival of Joy” will take place on Vienna’s Heldenplatz from 7:30 p.m. Federal President Alexander van der Bellen will give the opening remarks. Rosa Schneeberger will appear as a contemporary witness. Born in Vienna in 1936, she was arrested in 1941 along with her parents and siblings and deported to the Lackenbach camp in Burgenland – also known as the “Gypsy detention camp” in Nazi jargon. She had to spend four years of her childhood in this camp under inhumane conditions until it was liberated in 1945.
The Festival of Joy will be broadcast on ORF III and streamed internationally on the MKÖ’s online channels. (Program and further information: www.mkoe.at)
((forts. mgl.)) HKL
Copyright 2024, Kathpress (www.kathpress.at). All rights reserved
Questions & Contact:
Kathpress
Dr. Paul Wuthe
(01) 512 52 83
editorial staff@kathpress.at
#Scheuer #Mauthausen #liberation #celebration #power #rightly
