Just imagine for a second that you show an old photo of a young man in the form of the Wehrmacht of late 30’s-early 40-ies and tell us that this Saint of our Church? At least, most likely, it can cause a lot of issues. My reaction when it was almost the same: somewhere between a light shock and bewilderment. And then I read a lot. Read, surprised and happy.
- Saint-fascist
- The founder of the anti-Nazi “White rose” in Germany numbered among the saints
- Jim forest: don’t be prisoners of fear (+PHOTOS)
- Alexander Morel: I have fulfilled my mission in this life
- In Addition, Gartner. And the executioners have a soul
Germany and the memory of Russia
July 13, in celebration of the Cathedral of 12 apostles of Christ, marks the 75th anniversary of the martyrdom of Alexander Smores, one of the organizers of the student anti-Nazi underground organization “White rose”, which operated in Munich and several other German cities in the period from summer 1942 to winter 1943.
Only six months were given to several students and professors of the University of Munich on this risky and dangerous step. To deal with a terrible and well-oiled repressive machine of the totalitarian state, leading wars of conquest and mass exterminate people, especially in the heart of it – was akin to madness, but these Germans had not seen. However, there was not only the Germans.
Alexander Morel nanny
Alexander Morel, and now the Martyr Alexander of Munich, canonized among the saints in 2012 Berlin-a German diocese of ROCOR, German was the father. His mother was Russian, he was born in Orenburg in 1917, before the revolution, and in infancy was left without a mother and from an early age he was educated in Germany where he moved together with his new family his father. Brought up the usual Russian woman, nanny, Feodosiya Konstantinovna Lapshina, digital that Sorely were taken along with them to their historical homeland in Munich.
Although, as lovingly joked in the family of Sorela, her knowledge of the German language and only enough to tell that the owner is not at home, however, thanks to her memory of Russia Sasha is maintained not only through the stories and somewhere deep down at the genetic level. In the family, revered and loved Russian tradition. Father and Protestant stepmother-Catholic is not forbidden to raise her boy in the Orthodox tradition, and Alexander regularly visited the temple and attended Sunday school at one of Munich’s Orthodox parishes.
This grateful memory and love of native culture, and Alexander himself considered himself a link between the Russian and German cultures, who were connected with the Orthodox faith of the future Martyr, to stay with him forever until the last minutes of life in the dungeons of the Gestapo.
However, reading a biography, and now the life, and learning about the life of the future Martyr, I am more and more amazed inexplicable to me the ways of God’s Providence. Well, what fate could be waiting a young man of any age of the Martyr Alexander, in Nazi Germany? Call the Eastern front, the death? Many many people have passed this way. And not just gone, but, alas, believed in the truth of this path and your greater purpose. All this has indirectly affected the young Alexander.
It passed the police the same student
He had to wear a military uniform, see and the accession of Austria, and the seizure of the Sudeten areas, and then the March to the East. He’s never had to fight and shoot, he was a military doctor in the student company, to the form, and especially to its contents, had no relationship.
With each passing day and month of the war he became more and more aware of the extent of the evil which had unlimited power in Germany. Although is it just Germany? Much worse that this power spread its influence on the minds of tens and hundreds of thousands of people who lived in that state.
The country that gave the world composers, scientists, artists, who had a centuries-old Christian tradition, for some few years into a grim, ruthless, marching to drums and torches pagan tribe, the main idea and the dream which was not only the conquest of new territories, but the destruction of people and entire Nations that do not correspond to one known only to them the grounds of usefulness. All this has stirred up, touched live the Christian young man’s heart and induced him to fight.
We must understand that to organize resistance, and in General anything in Germany without the knowledge and control of the ideologues of the thousand-year Reich was almost pointless, so the way those few courageous people in a sense, was doomed to failure.
It’s amazing, but not agents of the secret police, not syskari, not professionals, and plain citizens were given to the authorities of Hans and Sophie Sala, organizers and accomplices of Alexander’s “the White rose”, which saw the flyers and helped to hold regular University plumber, and Alexander himself took him to the police the same student who accidentally found out his photograph among the wanted, in the Munich subway during a bombing.
What happened to people when all this started, how is it that a whole nation believed in its special uniqueness, allowing them to cross all the visible and invisible boundaries of the human? This question is rather rhetorical. However, on the other side of the front, on the other side long before the war a different ideology also absorbed the millions of minds turning and the like in the cogs, dutifully acting in a violent mechanism.
And the same denunciations, the same fear of the neighbor, the same expectation that at any moment your life will ruin someone’s lie or slander, it all kind of was the reverse side of the life that saw the future Martyr. Therefore, the “White rose” was not a political organization, its members were not members of the Communist underground, moreover, they considered and called themselves Christians. In addition to Smores, professing Christianity, in the organization were active Catholics and Protestants.
The return of the human image
Now I realize that in some way what had these people, in a way reminiscent of the feat, which came in the early centuries of our Holy apostles. With the only difference that the message of Christ they were not to proclaim a return to the deceived people’s minds. Leaflets of the White rose, was not preaching in the literal sense, but was an appeal not even to the civil and human conscience.
Leaflets “the White rose” was immortalized forever in front of the University
The return of the human image, and with it, perhaps, the memory of the image of God in man, a reminder of the importance of life and liberty and that no idea, however justified, may not be above them, was the target of these people. Stop the madness, to recover, to get back to creation, back to the person.
In one of the leaflets was a direct appeal to the Christian conscience of the nation: “Can there be, so I’ll ask you, you Christian, can be present in this fight for the preservation of your highest values of any indecision, the game of intrigue, delay decisions with the hope that someone else will raise for you a weapon to protect you? Did not God himself you the strength and the courage to fight?”
The apostles came into the world at the dawn of this world, Christians of the twentieth century had to elevate the word of man and his appointment is already at its sunset. How long it will last, that sunset? Organized the “White rose” were not only in Munich but also in several other German cities.
“My beloved parents, I am full of energy and tranquility”
From February 1943, the arrests and executions of members of the White rose, in April, was arrested and Alexander. On the day of his execution, Hans Scholl wrote his parents: “My beloved parents! I am full of energy and tranquility. Take even the Holy Mysteries and blissfully depart. Give yourself more to read the 90th Psalm. Thank you that you gave me such a rich life…”
Almost two months and continued interrogation of Alexander. July 13, 1943, the day he died, he wrote to his family: “I go there in the mind, what was the deep conviction of the truth. (…) A few hours, and I’ll be a better life, his mother, and I will not forget you, I will pray to God for comfort and peace for you! And I will wait for you! One especially puts on your hearts: never forget God!!! Your Shura”.
On the same day, saying goodbye after confession and communion with his priest, Alexander said, “I have fulfilled my mission in this life and no idea what could else could you do in this world.”
Now I myself wonder: the Martyr Alexander almost my contemporary, in any case, we were born and even lived in the same century, my own grandparents lived in the years of the German occupation of Soviet territory, who knows, maybe somewhere in some connections that were in the territories of the Soviet Union, was and that the future Saint.
I don’t know this, but I see that the path of every Christian, the path is thorny and difficult, requires commitment, and commitment begins with a very hard struggle, fighting with yourself. If the darkness that is in me, as it is written in the gospel, is overcome by a Light so terrible and invincible darkness. And indifference, my personal indifference, if it prevails in my life, is the beginning of death, death that is worse than the guillotine and the Gestapo. It is possible to not notice and die, apparently Zdravstvuy and continuing to live the appearance and the Mirage of life.