MARTIN NIEMOELLER FOUND COMFORT IN BIBLE IN GAOL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 38, 16 April 1948, Page 3

MARTIN NIEMOELLER FOUND COMFORT IN BIBLE IN GAOL

(Contributed by the Ministers’ Association)

The door of my Cell No. 1 opened suddenly, and in strutted an officer. I rose from my footstool, writes Martin Niemoeller. “You have been announced to me as the personal prisoner of the Fuehrer, and we have awaited you, as you well may know, for a long time. Now, have you any wishes or complaints?” I was struck by the man’s behaviour, which was nearly polite. I knew at once, that he must be the “Lagerkommandant” of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, whose reputation was more than bad. So I hesitated a moment, and then answered: “Yes, I have complaints, and many; for I have been stripped last night, when I was brought here by your men, of practically everything —of my wedding ring, my wrist watch, my suspenders, and of all my books and papers, which I was alowed to have with me during my imprisonment in Moabit Prison for eight months. And I have accordingly many wishes, but one wish before all—that you give back to me my Bible and that instantly!” > Now it was his turn to hesitate; for Bibles were not allowed inside the barbed wire. He was uncertain what to do in this special case. Might there arise difficulties for himself if he were to refuse my repuest? We wavered then he hallooed his guard. “Get this man’s Bible from my office,” he said. < And ten minutes later, I had my Bible back. The Bible; what did this book mean to me during the long and weary years of solitary confinement and then for the last four years when I lived together with three Catholic priests who were my only companions at Dachau Cell-Build-ing? The Word of God was simply everything to me—comfort and strength, guidance and hope, master of my days and companion of my nights, and the water of life which refreshed my soul. And even more: here was my task and the instrument to fulfil it. “Solitary confinement” ceased to be solitary. I heard steps under my window, which was too high for looking outside, but not too far to call out through it a word of the Bible—-a single grain of seed that might be caught from my window by the passerby. And when later on I was allowed ,to walk in the courtyard outside my window for half an hour, there were other windows—not too high to call up such a word of God to him, the brother prisoner who led his life of solitude behind and beyond its bars. “The Word of God is not bound,” and it was not, neither by wire nor by bars. And it became comfort and strength, guidance and hope for others, as it ought to become.