"...The Allied forces were gradually winning the day, and they could not come quick enough for us — not that we wanted the ordinary, poor German solider killed, they could not help what they were doing — but we were hoping for an early defeat of the Nazis ... [During this time, we witnessed Schwandorf, a neighboring town] about six miles away, being leveled to the ground by a carpet bombing at 4:00 in the morning. It was just awful to listen to it ... Papers were dropped by the bombers, saying that we would hear from them again." — Father Viktor's personal account of wartime events, written to superiors in Rome.
On April 19, 1945, dawn broke over the Miesberg, its strengthening golden light washing over a silent Bavarian town caught between fear of advancing Allied forces and guarded hopes for an end to Nazi oppression. The air raid that decimated Schwandorf drove nearly one-third of Schwarzenfeld's residents into forested localities and nearby hamlets. Knowing that local officials ordered Volkssturm forces to defend their town, Father Viktor and his followers prayed that peace would prevail when American forces arrived, sparing the lives of frail old men and young children conscripted into this desperate militia.
Outside Schwarzenfeld's borders, an advancing Allied spearhead precipitated events destined to shape history in the obscure Bavarian town. The catalyst was a bullet-riddled locomotive limping into Schwarzenfeld's train station, shuddering to a halt on track number three. Within its battered railway cars, this convoy traveling toward Dachau carried 2,500 Jewish prisoners evacuated from Flossenbürg, a concentration camp located approximately 30 kilometers from the German-Czechoslovakian border. Mistaking the train for a military convoy, American aircraft monitoring enemy movements strafed this prisoner transport twice during its five-day journey through the Bavarian countryside. While SS "Capo" guards crouched in forests and open fields, prisoners used the pandemonium to their advantage and succeeded in obtaining their freedom; as a result, the lead Capo ordered his soldiers to shoot any inmate who abandoned the train — regardless of another air raid.
Moments after the Miesbergkirche's bell tower announced the morning hour in ten booming tones, a foreboding, mechanical roar sent Schwarzenfeld's inhabitants scrambling into basements and designated public shelters. Low-flying American planes screamed overhead, swooping north, leaving the town unscathed; for the third time, they fired upon the crippled prisoner transport hiding in Schwarzenfeld's train depot. Locked inside cars strafed with bullets, thousands of victims thrashed against barred doors in a frantic effort to evacuate. Those tortured souls who broke free leapt toward SS soldiers crouching in the woods, firing upon prisoners attempting escape. Caught in a lethal crossfire, forty prisoners died, and hundreds were wounded.
In the aftermath of the bloodbath, SS Capos separated their able-bodied prisoners from those who sustained crippling injuries, and they summarily executed one hundred victims unable to continue on the death march to Dachau. The sharp report of bullets echoing from Schwarzenfeld's train station accompanied high-pitched "all-clear" alarms signaling safety to townspeople in hiding. Emerging from their homes and shelters, residents recoiled from the embodiment of human suffering trudging along Schwarzenfeld's main thoroughfare. Former mayor Wilhelm Geldner describes the horrific scene:
"I saw prisoners shot or beaten till death by the SS guards," he testified in a sworn statement produced for the Nuremberg trials. "[The dead were] being transported on an open wagon covered only with some wood-wool, their hands and feet hanging over the wagon sides. They were being moved from the train station through the town to the dump, [where they were being deposited into a mass grave by their comrades]. This happened during broad daylight. The whole population was very upset."
Reactions varied widely throughout Schwarzenfeld. Anesthetized by propaganda extolling Aryan supremacy and natural selection — a doctrine regarding compassion as an aberration of nature reserved for the weak — Nazi loyalists retreated behind slammed doors, waiting for the gruesome spectacle to pass. A street vendor jabbed his finger toward prisoners pilfering potatoes from his vegetable cart, which resulted in a swift public execution. As spiritual Passionist priests who invariably connected suffering with Christ's Passion and Resurrection, Fathers Viktor and Paul gazed upon this manifestation of human misery and envisioned Jesus' visage in each tormented face. Equally motivated to answer the cry of humanity, their followers flocked to the streets, bread and water in hand. When furious Capos drove them away at gunpoint, they contrived ways to stealthily distribute their offerings. One courageous woman working at the Gindele bakery confronted SS guards:
"They were starving, begging us for food by pointing to their mouths," Frau Friese revealed during her interview. "In the Gindele bakery, we were working as quickly as possible, cutting slices of bread for them. I dashed out the door, carrying a basket of bread and some water ... I was shouting to the guards, 'Don't you see that these people are hungry, why don't you let them go?' The guards were very angry, but finally I convinced them and it was possible to give the prisoners something."
The day's events exacerbated social tensions between desperate Nazis facing the Reich's demise and restless Schwarzen awaiting an imminent American arrival. Ordered to clear out "the black list," a classified document identifying local Parish leaders and Schwarzen targeted for surveillance and execution, the Volkssturm began constructing gallows in a secret location. Meanwhile, their leadership scoured Schwarzenfeld, intending to arrest those who, according to the Nazi state, committed treason by assisting and concealing Jewish prisoners. Before they succeeded in hunting down the town's prominent Schwarzen and their parish leadership, a frantic call to defend Schwarzenfeld's borders disrupted their plans. At last, the Americans had arrived.
Next: Part 7 — A Town in Crisis »