Background
Bernhard Lichtenberg was born in Oława, on 3 December 1875.
Bernhard Lichtenberg was born in Oława, on 3 December 1875.
Ordained as a Catholic priest in 1899, he served as a military chaplain during World War I. After the war he became a Berlin City Councillor, representing the Catholic Centre Party.
In 1932 he was appointed Pastor of St Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin and six years later he became its Provost.
He died on 3 November 1943 while being transferred to Dachau concentration camp.
On 28 August 1941 Father Lichtenberg sent a sharp letter of protest to Reich Medical Leader, Leonardo Conti, denouncing the euthanasia programme and supporting the position taken by the Cardinal Archbishop of Münster, Clemens von Galen.
Father Lichtenberg demanded that the Chief Physician of the Reich answer for the crime of killing mentally ill persons, ‘which will call forth the vengeance of the Lord on the heads of the German nation'.
The euthanasia action was in fact called off, but Lichtenberg was arrested on 23 October 1941 for the much more dangerous offence of having publicly prayed for the Jews and even demanded that he be allowed to join them on their journey to the East. The Berlin Provost was one of the very few German priests to have openly condemned the anti-semitic persecution.
For this ‘crime’ he spent two years in Berlin’s Tegel prison.