From the first days of the Nazi rise to power in 1933, a young Bavarian pastor named Paul Schneider spoke out against the Nazi regime’s interference with religious matters.1 Schneider and other like-minded Protestant clergy supported the Confessing Church2 that formed in opposition to the Nazification of Germany’s Protestant churches in the 1930s. He was especially vocal in his opposition to Nazi interference in church affairs.
The Gestapo arrested Schneider for the first time in 1934 for objecting to a local Nazi leader’s attempt to interfere in a funeral service that Schneider was performing for a Hitler Youth leader. Schneider was held in so-called “protective custody”3 for a week before he was released. The Gestapo followed Schneider’s activities over the next several years and frequently harassed him at his home. They did not accuse Schneider of breaking the law, but they recorded his disagreements with local Nazi leaders, his statements of support for Jewish people, and his refusal to vote for the Nazi Party. The Gestapo arrested Schneider again in late 1937—without accusing him of committing any crimes—and imprisoned him indefinitely in Buchenwald concentration camp.
The featured report from a Nazi SS guard to the Buchenwald camp commandant describes how Schneider defied camp authorities by refusing to stop preaching to his fellow prisoners. Multiple survivors’ accounts recall how Schneider gave religious sermons and quoted Bible passages to them through the window of his cell. Schneider often received punishments from the guards for his refusal to obey commands and camp rules. The incident described here took place early on the morning of Sunday, August 28, 1938.
A former prisoner named Carl Gärtig later remembered hearing Schneider’s “clear and decisive voice” as he preached to the thousands of prisoners assembled for roll call on Sunday mornings. Perhaps recalling the very incident described in the featured report, Gärtig remarked that Schneider was once “allowed to say just a few words” before SS guards entered his cell and “the marvelous voice from an invincible world came to an end and the cracking whip was heard instead.”4
Archival documents suggest that Schneider was subjected to violent punishment for his defiance of camp authorities.5 Buchenwald guards frequently mistreated and abused Schneider, who soon developed medical issues. Camp documents record that Schneider died less than a year after the incident described in the featured report. He was 41 years old at the time of his death. Multiple accounts assert that Schneider was injected with a fatal dose of poison in the camp hospital.