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Monday, April 9, 1945: The Allied military forces were continuing to advance deeper into the heartland of Germany. At the same time, in a Nazi concentration camp behind the battle lines, a German doctor was witnessing a martyrdom.
Ten years later, the event still vivid in his memory, he wrote: I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer … kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.
The doctor witnessed the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran minister and a great Christian hero of this century. Bonhoeffer, a pastor and theologian, was arrested and tried for smuggling Jews out of…
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