Mission at Nuremberg by Tim Townsend

Author:Tim Townsend
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

From 8 May until 31 May I conducted burial services for 1,834 inmates of Camp Mauthausen and for 1,077 inmates of Camp Gusen. I also visited the hospitals of these two camps and administered the last rites of the Catholic Church to more than 2,000 patients. I found Catholic priests in both camps and secured Mass kits for them and with their help arranged for both daily and Sunday Mass in these Camps. My work still continues at both places.

In the month O’Connor spent at Mauthausen, he made nearly forty trips to the camp cemeteries and buried about one hundred people with each service.

“This unit moved to a new area on 7 June 1945,” he wrote. “Thus the work at the Concentration Camps, Camp Mauthausen and Camp Gusen, came to an end.” That was the last he ever wrote about it. If he ever spoke about it, he didn’t do so publicly.

O’Connor told a few friends after the war that Patton had heard about his soothing of the German POWs’ fears during the Battle of the Bulge, and that six months later the general personally recommended O’Connor for the Nuremberg assistant chaplain position.

In early September, O’Connor was ordered to join the Twenty-Sixth Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division. Within days, he was back in Germany with a new assignment as the Catholic chaplain for the Nazi war criminals awaiting trial at Nuremberg.

The army’s Technical Manual TM 16–205 states that the chaplain who “shares the peril of battle, showing kindness that never fails and a sincere concern” for the welfare of his flock “will gain a place in their confidence that will reinforce powerfully all his efforts to give moral and religious instruction and inspiration.” O’Connor’s flock now included the authors of the slaughter he’d seen at Mauthausen.

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