The Way Back

When Hitler came to power in 1933, a German Dominican named Father Leonard Roth quietly began to oppose him. Within two years, the Gestapo was making it so hot for Father Roth that he fled to Switzerland. In 1943, he slipped back into Germany to carry on his undercover fight against the Nazis. Almost before he knew it, he had landed in the Reich's most notorious concentration camp--Dachau. There he saw a guard beat two of his fellow priests to death.

When the U.S. Army came, two years later, Father Roth was still alive. But 5,000 of his fellow prisoners were too ill with typhus to leave, and Father Roth stayed on at Dachau to minister to them. Later his enemies were moved in--25,000 SS war prisoners. Ex-Prisoner Roth stayed on.

Today, Dachau is filled with Nazis awaiting trial as war criminals, and anti-Nazi Father Roth is still among them, searching for their families, requesting leaves for those sentenced to death, doing everything in his power to make their lives more tolerable.

Friendly, 42-year-old Domkapitular Roth holds regular services in Dachau's 1,500-seat Catholic church, which was built by volunteer SS prisoners and is equipped with an organ whose pipes are made of U.S. Army tin cans. Says Father Roth:

"I want to show the way back to religious convictions to those who are religiously lost. For this reason, I have not limited myself to religious ministrations of purely confessional basis, but have tried to lead these people back to humanity along ethical and human paths. Two-thirds of them are not interested spiritually, but are [interested] ethically. I hope to achieve a spiritual reformation of these people on the principles of those natural moral laws which Nazi ideology destroyed. . . .

"I have built up a good relationship to my people, although many are opposed to me as a Catholic priest. But I tell them the truth whether they like it or not. . . . Only one thing I never do: I never scold them. I still have the impression [that] many are receptive to the ideal of democratic moral regeneration."

As to the future role of his church in Germany, Father Roth has positive ideas: "First, the church should be more active in social welfare. Secondly, we must find the possibility for the closer approach of the two confessions [Catholicism, Protestantism] to each other with the smallest emphasis on differences. Thirdly, we must lead the life of the Catholic Church out of the purely traditional to the convincing and important task of awakening man's love for his fellow men."

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