Along with Bonhoeffer, six other members of the German resistance, including Hans Oster, Karl Sack, and Wilhelm Canaris, were killed by the Nazis at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9th, 1945.

Although seventy years have passed, Bonhoeffer's life and death continue to have deep significance for us today.

From the very beginning, Bonhoeffer was a staunch critic of Hitler and the Nazis. The day after Hitler was elected chancellor, Bonhoeffer gave a radio address in which he sharply criticized the currently fashionable and tyrannical understanding of the autonomous "Leader" (Führer).

In Hitler's rise to power, Bonhoeffer detected a dangerous connection between the will of the masses and an idolatrous concentration of power devoid of accountability and responsibility to any higher authority.

This conception of the Leader as an "office" was qualitatively different from previous ideas of divinely instituted political authority. The Leader was the expression of the individual will par excellence, and in his person vicariously represented the fulfillment of the masses.

In this way, the mass individualism manifested itself in a kind of collectivism, with the Leader acting as lord over the masses.

Among other things, argued Bonhoeffer, such an ideology ignored "the eternal law of individuality before God," which is violated when a leader "takes on superhuman responsibility, which in the end will crush him."

The basic God-given task of government is to protect and promote the freedom and vitality of other institutions of social life, not to colonize and tyrannize them.

Bonhoeffer thus opposed any totalizing ideology that attempted to subjugate all of human life and existence to political authority: "Where the state becomes the fulfillment of all spheres of human life and culture, it forfeits its true dignity, its specific authority as government." Continue reading

Sources

• The Witherspoon Institute
• Image: The Story of Liberty

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

"The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought," Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.

"We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was," he said, "but the numbers are unbelievable."

The documented camps include not only "killing centers" but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named "care" centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site — the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear.

The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery — centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions. Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times Sunday Review
• Image: etiquette

The call comes in response to Jenky's homily in which he denounced President Obama's "radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda," comparing his approach to that of Hitler and Stalin.

"Jenky's comments demonstrate ignorance of history, insensitivity to victims of genocide and absence of judgment," the faculty said in a letter to the university's president and the chairman of the university's board of trustees.

"We accept that Jenky's comments are protected by the First Amendment, but we find it profoundly offensive that a member of our beloved University's highest authority, the Board of Fellows, should compare the president's actions with those whose genocidal policies murdered tens of millions of people, including the specific targeting of Catholics, Jews and other minorities for their faith."

"We request that you issue a statement on behalf of the University that will definitively distance Notre Dame from Jenky's incendiary statement," they added. "Further, we feel that it would be in the best interest of Notre Dame if Jenky resigned from the University's Board of Fellows if he is unwilling to renounce loudly and publicly this destructive analogy."

Bishop Jenky is a member of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, which founded Notre Dame, he is a Notre Dame alumnus, a former director of campus ministry and is the sole bishop on both Notre Dame's board of trustees and board of fellows.

Sources

• The Observer
• LifeSite News
• Image: The Inquisitr

Bishop Jenky has come under fire for comparing President Barack Obama to being on "a similar path" as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

In his sermon, Jenky claimed that American Catholics are currently in a "war" due to the Obama administration's ruling on birth control and other issues.

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services and health care," preached Jenky.

"In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama, with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path," Jenky added.

"May God have mercy especially on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil."

Patricia Gibson, chancellor of the Peoria Diocese has sought to help clarify the bishop's comments.

"Based upon the current government's threatened infringement upon the Church's religious exercise of its ministry, Bishop Jenky offered historical context and comparisons as a means to prevent a repetition of historical attacks upon the Catholic Church and other religions," said Gibson.

"Bishop Jenky gave several examples of times in history in which religious groups were persecuted because of what they believed," Gibson said.

"We certainly have not reached the same level of persecution. However, history teaches us to be cautious once we start down the path of limiting religious liberty."

However, Rabbi Daniel Bogard of Peoria's Anshai Emeth congregation said that "casual use of the Holocaust and tragedy in general is really inappropriate."

And, according to the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Bishop Jenky's homily clearly urged people not to vote for Obama in this year's presidential elections, which is in violation of a federal law stating that tax payer-funded organizations should not seek to influence electoral campaigns.

"To be sure, Jenky never utters the words 'Do not vote for Obama,'" Lynn told the Chicago Tribune. "But the Internal Revenue Code makes it clear that statements need not be this explicit to run afoul of the law."

Sources

• Huffington Post
• Chicago Tribune
• Global Christian Post
• Chicago Tribune
• Image: The Inquisitr