Gereon Goldmann

Gereon Karl Goldmann, OFM (25 October 1916 – 26 July 2003) was a German Franciscan priest, a World War II veteran of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, and a member of the German Resistance against Adolf Hitler.

Early life Gereon Karl Goldmann was born on 10 October 1916 in Ziegenhain (now part of Schwalmstadt, Hesse) as one of seven children of Karl Goldmann, a veterinarian, and his wife, Margarethe. After his wife's death in 1924, Karl Goldmann remarried, and the family moved to Cologne. There, Gereon Goldmann joined the Bund Neudeutschland, a Catholic youth association run by the Jesuits. The group spent time doing charitable works in the city and countryside. Often, they were engaged in vicious street battles against the Hitler Youth group. Goldmann entered a Franciscan seminary in October 1936. When World War II began, he was transferred to a Waffen SS training unit in occupied Poland. In his memoirs, he vividly describes the anti-Christianity rampant in the Waffen SS and the brutal hazing wreaked on his fellow Catholic recruits. After performing outstandingly in officer's training Goldmann was offered a position as an officer, on the condition that he abandons his faith and vocation. Goldmann refused and was scorned by his superiors. In response he sent a protest directly to the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, and in early 1942, he was transferred back to the Wehrmacht in disgrace. He spoke openly of his hatred for Nazism, and September 1942, he was charged with high treason. He had a court martial in Kassel but was acquitted and so he escaped the death penalty.

He was then transferred to the Eastern Front. Goldmann was soon arrested again and spent the winter of 1943 in prison. He was then sent to occupied France and later to Sicily.

The next day, Goldmann informed von Trott zu Solz that his terms were acceptable. He then joined the 20 July Plot as a carrier of secret dispatches. One such assignment led him to Rome in January 1944. Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German Ambassador to the Vatican, was sympathetic to the Resistance and arranged an audience for Goldmann with Pope Pius XII. The Pope granted Goldmann special dispensation to be ordained to the priesthood without the customary three years of theology studies. On 24 June 1944, he was ordained a priest by the archbishop of Algiers in the camp chapel. From August 1944 until the end of 1945, he served as a chaplain in a camp at Ksar es Souk, Morocco. According to Goldmann's memoirs, many of the inmates at Ksar es Souk remained convinced Nazis and therefore regarded their chaplain as a traitor. They falsely accused him of being the former commandant of Dachau concentration camp, alleging that he had attempted to escape prosecution by becoming a priest.

Honours Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany ("Bundesverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse")