A Lamb and a Shepherd Among Wolves
In the previous essay in this series, we honored Blessed Otto Neururer, the first priest to be executed by the Nazis. We also acknowledged those better-known victims of the Third Reich’s anti-Christian pogrom, St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). It is also fitting, however, that we should commemorate some other largely-unknown victims of Hitler’s National Socialist regime.
On August 9, 1943, on the first anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross at Auschwitz, a devout Austrian Catholic, Franz Jägerstätter, was guillotined at Brandenburg-Görden Prison in Germany. The “crime” for which he was executed was being a conscientious objector who refused to be enlisted in the Wehrmacht, the army of the Third Reich. His martyrdom was the culmination of five years of passive resistance to the Nazis.
In March 1938, after German troops occupied Austria, Jägerstätter was the only person in his village to vote against the annexation of Austria (the Anschluss) in the following month’s referendum to ratify de jure what the Nazis had already accomplished de facto with their
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
