Chad Bird tells the story of Henry Gerecke, a pastor of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and a military chaplain assigned to minister to the war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, including walking with ten of them to the gallows. Many of the Nazis clung to their Nietzschean paganism. But some of them Pastor Gerecke led to Christ.
That might bother some of us. Surely, if anyone deserves Hell, these mass-murdering monsters did. We might think that it’s wrong to extend the Gospel to sinners of this magnitude. As if Christ, when He bore the sins of the world on the Cross did not carry what these men had done. That would make the Cross too hideously ugly. But it is. And this is what Christianity is all about, or it is nothing.
After the jump, read about Pastor Gerecke. And follow the link to read him tell his own story, including the names of the Nazis who did and who did not come to Christ.
They walked to the gallows together, pastor and penitent. Each step up took them closer to the fall–the abbreviated, fatal fall to come. As the criminal stood above the trapdoor that, moments later, would open to rope him into eternity, an officer asked him if he had any final words. ”I place all my confidence in the Lamb who made atonement for my sins. May God have mercy on my soul,” he said. Then, turning toward the man who had been the shepherd of his soul during his incarceration, who had been his confessor, his preacher, and the one from whose hand he had received the body and blood of Jesus in the Supper, he said, ”I’ll see you again.” Then noosed, hooded in black, and legs tied, he dropped out of this world into another.
As gripping as this account is, no doubt many similar scenarios have played out in the course of history, where condemned men have found repentance and faith when certain death looms nigh. What makes this story remarkable is that this man, along with many others who were hanged that day, was among the most hated men in human history, guilty of atrocities so horrific only words forged in hell could adequately describe them. These were Hitler’s men. His closest confidants. His very own pack of wolves. Yet in the months leading up to their executions or imprisonments, many of them had been transformed from Hitler’s wolves into Christ’s lambs thanks to the ministry of a farm boy from Missouri, who grew up to be a pastor, and who reluctantly agreed to be the chaplain of the fifteen Protestant war criminals during the Nuremberg trials at the close of World War II.
Henry Gerecke was in his early 50′s when he went, cell by cell, to introduce himself to his infamous ‘congregation’ and to invite them to chapel services. Some refused, others wavered, and still others promised to be there. Of the fifteen chairs set up for the first service, thirteen of them were filled. Scriptures were read, sermons preached, hymns sung, prayers prayed. And, through it all, hearts were changed. Soon some of the very lips that had once barked, ”Heil Hitler!” spoke a repentance-confessing, faith-affirming Amen as they knelt to eat and drink the body and blood of their forgiving Lord. They expressed a desire for their children to be baptized. One of them, though he began reading the Bible to find justification for his unbelief, ended up being led to faith by the very same divine words. So reliant did these men become upon their pastor that, when a rumor surfaced that he might be relieved of his duty and allowed to return home, they wrote a letter to Mrs. Gerecke, begging her to ask him to stay. On that letter were the signatures of all these former Nazis, men who had enjoyed power and rank, now humbly beseeching a housewife in America, who had not seen her husband for two and a half years, to let him stay. In her brief reply, “They need you,” is packed a whole volume about sacrifice and love.
Pastor Gerecke’s story has already been told (see links below), but it deserves to be retold, again and again, to every generation, for two very important reasons. The first has to do with the men to whom he ministered, the ones who repented and believed in Christ. The scandal of Christianity is not that these men went to heaven; it is that God loved them so much that he was willing to die to get them there. Had it been a human decision, many would have thrown these men, guilty of such atrocities, into the flames of hell. But the truth is that people are not condemned because they murder, or steal, or lie, but because they reject Jesus as the one who has already endured hell for them on the cross, and earned a place for them in heaven. There is no one who is so vile that he is beyond redemption, because the redemption of Christ envelops all people.
Another reason Pastor Gerecke’s story needs to be remembered involves his vocation, and those who share it. What pastor, knowing he was about to visit men such as these, would not have struggled to find any hope in their possible repentance? But Gerecke visited each cell anyway, invited each man to hear the Word, and left it to the Spirit to do the work of making new creations of these hardened criminals. Nor did he mince words, surrender his convictions, or water down the truth for them. On the evening before he was to be hanged, one of the men, Goering, asked to be communed, just in case he was wrong and there was some truth to the Christian claims. But Gerecke refused to give the Sacrament to one who so obstinately refused repentance, and treated the Supper as if it were an edible, just-in-case, insurance policy. When Christ calls men into the office of the holy ministry, he calls them to be faithful—not successful, not popular, not practical, not winsome, not cool, but faithful. They are to preach even when they doubt it will bear fruit. They are to give the word of Christ to sinners, and let the Christ of that word do his work. And he does. He convicts, he calls, he saves, he baptizes, he feeds, and, finally, he welcomes one and all into his kingdom with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
In 1961, at the age of sixty-eight, Pastor Gerecke passed from this life into the next. He entered that innumerable company of saints who had gone before him, some of whom had been among his flock during his years of ministry, one of whom, atop the gallows, had promised, “I’ll see you again.” And he did.
You have got to read this .pdf of an old Saturday Evening Post article in which Pastor Gerecke tells his story in his own words. (I couldn’t copy and paste from it, but go to the link.) It gives many more details, including the names of the Nazis whom he or his fellow chaplain, a Roman Catholic priest, reached and those who would have nothing to do with his message. There are some surprises.
HT: Mary
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