Letter from Catholic Heinrich Ruster to family members, written from the Nazi camp at Sachsenhausen, where he was killed on October 23, 1942.
Heinrich Ruster was a German Catholic layman, publicist, married to Susanna Katharina Kleinsorg. He died at the age of 58 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp after being arrested several times for speaking out against the Führer. , before he passed away on October 23, 1942, Heinrich Ruster said, “Why should we fear the dark way of death? Why should we not drink joyfully from the cup from which He also drank, and not accept an event that happened to Him?” The Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, on Jan. 10, 2005, during a solemn celebration of the Word, delivered to St. Bartholomew’s Church on the Island a letter written by Ruster from the Nazi concentration camp to his wife shortly before his death: “And to you my beloved and faithful companion I give all the strength of my heart; it beats every hour for you, that you may know it. And in this imperturbable communion we carry our destiny with righteousness and trust in God!”
read more
Letter from Blessed Stanislaw Starowieysky
Letter from Blessed Stanislaw Starowieysky, Polish Catholic, written in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, where he died on 13 April 1941 Stanislaw spent his childhood in a family home in Krosno, where he joined…
Relic of St. Kolbe
Relic and prayer book of St Maximilian Kolbe, who was killed in Auschwitz on 14 August 1941. St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe was a Polish Franciscan who was called “patron saint of our difficult century” by…
Letter from Ruster
Letter from Catholic Heinrich Ruster to family members, written from the Nazi camp at Sachsenhausen, where he was killed on October 23, 1942. Heinrich Ruster was a German Catholic layman, publicist, married to Susanna Katharina…
Host case of Eugen Bolz’s wife.
Custody for consecrated wafers used by the wife of Eugen Bolz, a Catholic and opponent of the Nazi regime who was beheaded on January 23, 1945; thanks to it Bolz received Communion despite being forbidden…
Letter from Father Capelli, killed in 1944 by the SS
Letter of Father Martino Nicola Capelli, young Dehonian priest killed on 1 October 1944 by the SS in the massacre of Monte Sole. The letter kept in the little chapel dedicated to the martyrs of…
Letter of the Lutheran Bishop of Warsaw Juliusz Bursche
The letter of Polish Evangelical Bishop Juliusz Bursche, preserved in the chapel dedicated to the martyrs of Nazism, was sent to his family from the Sachsenhausen/Oranienburg concentration camp, where he had been interned in 1939…