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Quote of the day, 3 August: Doctor Lenig’s testimony
I met Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce, known in the camp as Edith Stein, on [3 August 1942], in the transit camp at Amersfoort, in barracks No. 9, if I am not mistaken.
On that Sunday all Catholics of Jewish, or partly Jewish, ancestry were arrested by the German hangmen’s helpers as a reprisal for a pastoral letter that had been read from the pulpits of all Dutch churches the previous Sunday.
Entrance, Camp Amersfoort
Image credit: FaceMePLS / Wikimedia Commons (Some rights reserved)When your Sister, together with about three hundred men, women and children had been driven behind the barbed wire fence of the camp, they had to stand for hours on the barrack-square, where they could watch a roll call that had been in progress for two or three days as punishment for the entire camp.
More upsetting was the condition of most of the women…
It was at this moment that Edith Stein courageously showed her commitment.With diligence, they read the Imitation of Christ that someone had smuggled in; a Trappist faithfully said Holy Mass for them—his six brothers and sisters who had all joined the same Order were with him [the Loeb family], all prepared for transport.
The martyred Loeb family, Dutch Trappists who shared the same transport as Edith and Rosa Stein. Read the Trappist generalate’s tribute here.
Image credit: Koningshoeven AbbeyHoly Communion was distributed diligently, and despite the harassment by the SS, every one of this flock destined for death steadfastly sang the Confiteor daily, until the last of them had gone their way…
It was also very moving to see the response of this brave flock of believers when they heard that there were priests somewhere in the camp; immediately they gave up some of their meager rations, their tobacco, their money, etc., that were now useless to them but might help the priests to placate their torturers and so hope to experience the day of liberation.
Dr. Fritz Lenig
As recorded by Sister Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D. in Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, chap. 22
Note: Dr. Fritz Lenig was a German physician, entrepreneur, and refugee in the Netherlands who was interned at Camp Amersfoort when the transport arrived carrying the Carmelite Stein sisters and the Trappist Loeb family, along with other Catholics of Jewish ancestry.
After the war, the Cologne Carmelites were anxiously searching for news of Edith and Rosa’s whereabouts. An unexpected 1947 article in l’Osservatore Romano claimed the sisters had been killed, but the source was untraceable. The Cologne nuns sent a circular letter worldwide to correct misinformation about the sisters.
As a direct result, Professor Max Budde contacted the nuns to tell them that his friend Dr. Fritz Lenig had been at Camp Amersfoort when Sister Benedicta and Rosa arrived, but had escaped death.
This excerpt presents Dr. Lenig’s eyewitness testimony to the Carmel of Cologne concerning Edith and Rosa’s arrival at Camp Amersfoort on 3 August 1942.
Posselt, T 2005, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, translated from the German by Batzdorff S, Koeppel J, and Sullivan J, ICS Publications, Washington DC.
Featured image: St. Edith Stein among Catholic prisoners behind barbed wire, an artistic rendering of the testimony recorded in this post. Image credit: © Romulo Rodrigues, used by kind permission of the Discalced Carmelites.