"The Sunday in April after Easter [April 22] we were in the recreation room with a secular priest, discussing for a few hours what we would do when the Americans came...[afterwards], two of the religious [who had recently joined us from Maria Schutz] went out for a walk, but they were hardly out for ten minutes when they came back running into the Church saying that the Americans were already on the border of the town. As agreed we made for the church tower...we saw the tanks coming down the road shooting their way into the town, and before long they were banging at the church door." — Father Viktor's personal account of wartime events, written to superiors in Rome.
His German brethren huddling in the doorway behind him, Father Viktor emerged from the Miesbergkirche, open palms extended in a conciliatory gesture, and he took slow, tentative steps toward Sherman tanks rolling into the church courtyard. A visible jolt passed through soldiers peering up from their rifle scopes to gaze at the stout, black-robed priest speaking fluent American English. As if in answer to Viktor's prayers, he discovered that his countrymen encountered little resistance while liberating Schwarzenfeld. Recognizing the futility in attacking superior Allied forces, the local Volkssturm leader ordered his militia units to stand down; meanwhile, relieved citizens hiding in their homes draped white towels and bed sheets outside their windows, signaling the town's peaceful surrender. Except for an isolated incident in which SS soldiers withdrew into a barn and fired upon the Division's Combat Command "A" squadron, Schwarzenfelders welcomed American troops who swiftly deposed their oppressive government and, to Father Viktor's satisfaction, restored Passionist control over the Miesbergkloster.
Night descended over a newly liberated Bavarian town anticipating a lasting peace with the American occupation, but the following morning, shadows of Nazi hatred rose from a murky past and plunged Schwarzenfeld into chaos. When dawn's golden light filtered through the Miesbergkloster's eastern windows, the first portents reached Father Viktor: he received an urgent message — perhaps via telephone or a visitation by American soldiers — demanding his presence at the Rathaus (town hall). He discovered that Schwarzenfeld's liberators, the 11th Armored Division, departed in the early morning hours and continued on their mission to drive Nazi forces from the Bavarian Palatinate. (Within days, they also liberated 1,400 survivors of the Flossenbürg death march). Their replacements, two regiments from the American 26th "Yankee" Infantry Division, occupied Schwarzenfeld with orders to secure the town. While surveying a grassy meadow along its southeastern borders, scouts discovered a lime-covered pit of horror containing the stripped, tortured remains of 140 atrocity victims hastily buried by surviving prisoners five days ago. An interrogated individual testified that Schwarzenfeld's population participated in this crime against humanity.
Walking into town, Father Viktor stood aghast at the sight before him. Women and children cowered away from American soldiers driving the male population — young and old, Schwarzen and Nazi — at gunpoint into narrow, crowded streets, where military vehicles awaited them. An American commander ordered the convoy to transport Schwarzenfeld's men to the neighboring village of Deiselkühn, where soldiers would execute them for their alleged crime. Wives pleaded on behalf of their husbands, mothers for their sons, and daughters for their fathers in a wailing jumble that American soldiers failed to comprehend, though Father Viktor understood their imploring words and immediately perceived that Schwarzenfeld's fate rested in his hands.
During the war years, Father Viktor avoided confrontation against Nazi officials who frequently imprisoned or executed anyone questioning their orders. No such fears inhibited him as he marched into Schwarzenfeld's Rathaus, seeking the American commander ordering reprisals against the town's male population. Infamous for his tenacity, he possessed experience in conducting negotiations, though this time the stakes were higher than failing to acquire property, permission, or funding: lives depended on his arbitration skills. He found himself evenly matched against an opponent who remembered crouching in foxholes during the Battle of the Bulge, losing comrades under his command to entrenched German forces. He was a witness to war, and yet few horrors compared to the atrocity discovered on Schwarzenfeld's borders. Regardless of the town's innocence or its religious devotion, its citizens remained stained with guilt for one crime above all others — living in the Third Reich's inescapable shadow.
Three hours later, Father Viktor trudged through the Rathaus door, where anxious Schwarzen women and children awaited him. Surrounded by people who followed his lead during the war years, he delivered an announcement that became indelibly etched into Schwarzenfeld's long history. Yielding to Father Viktor's litany on compassion, justice, innocence before proven culpability, and a mutual belief in the "American way," the commander agreed to spare the Bavarian town under one condition: its citizens had to disinter 140 victims buried in the mass grave, wash their decomposing remains, clothe them in donated clothing, construct caskets, conduct a proper funeral service, and rebury them in the town's cemetery — all in 48 hours. If they failed to complete their task in the allotted time, he would reissue orders to execute the male population.
Schwarzenfeld historian Oswald Wilhelm reveals that, during those two harrowing days, "Everywhere Pater Viktor Koch was to be seen: with manufacturing the coffins, with the excavation of the mass grave on 23 and 24 April 1945 for the former concentration camp prisoners. He was the most important person with the coordination of the funeral, the link between the mayors, the church and the US army. Between April 23 and 25 he worked straight through, day and night, hardly taking a break."
Eyewitness Frau Zita Müller, who was 13 years old at the time, remembers working in one of Schwarzenfeld's three operating carpentry shops, constructing caskets:
"My mother, aunts, and sister were constructing caskets in the carpentry shop. We were anxious and frightened, working a whole day and night, and despite the long hours we spent hammering the caskets together, we knew that we were facing an impossible task and we would not be able to finish in time. The following morning when we were supposed to have all of our caskets completed, the American soldiers came looking for us, and when they came bursting through the door wondering why we were not done, we shrank away, crying, fearing the worst ... suddenly, standing like an angel in the doorway, Father Viktor stepped into the room and pushed back the soldiers ... he spoke firm words to them until they left, then turned and spoke to us, calming us down.
"I was forever impressed by the strength of character of this man," she adds. "I remember him so vividly still."
On the morning of April 25th, 1945, Schwarzenfeld's five hundred men, women and children assembled in a grim human wall around 140 hastily constructed caskets, their heads bowed, hands folded in prayer. While Dean Josef Spangler delivered the funeral homily, Father Viktor translated services in English for American soldiers witnessing the event. Despite catastrophes threatening to impede progress — a shortage of nails, a war-depleted work force of women and children who had never touched a hammer, and a widespread electrical power outage, to name a few — he successfully coordinated the effort that saved Schwarzenfeld.
Next: Part 8 — The Ehrenbürger »