Between the executioner and the victim: Hans Heinrich – Rosa – Edith

Introduction:

The destinies of individuals sometimes intertwine in unique ways, and it is virtually impossible to understand a person’s life without understanding the environment that shaped them. This is why we so readily refer to information from the past, which forms a kind of backdrop against which we observe our main character. Of course, such an approach to reality raises many questions to which it is not always possible to find adequate answers. In the life of the Holy Father John Paul II, quite unexpectedly for many, we discover the considerable role played by two holy figures, whose names he mentions in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope. They are Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe and Saint Edith Stein, both of whom perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The lives of Saint Maximilian and camp commander Rudolf Höss have already been studied in great depth. It is not our place to seek the reasons that led these two men, both from Catholic backgrounds and altar boys in their childhood, to follow such divergent paths, finding themselves as adults on opposite sides of the “barricade” that constitutes for us our relationships with others, our approach to life, and our relationship with God.

The life of Saint Edith Stein is generally quite well known thanks to her own biography[1]. The same is true of her feelings and philosophical reflections. However, knowledge of the reality of Lublinitz, where the attitude towards life was undoubtedly forged, if not by Edith herself, then at least by her sister Rosa, leads us to wonder about the course that the lives of these two children from the same background might have taken.

The following reflections are a collection of thoughts that originated from a strange set of circumstances. They offer us the opportunity to retrace the journey of Rosa Stein, a native of Lublinitz and the elder sister of Saint Edith, whom she accompanied to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and that of Hans Heinrich Lammers, also a native of Lublinitz, the man responsible for the legal justification of the so-called ‘Final Solution’ to the Jewish question in Nazi Germany.

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In 1844, Augusta Weigert had a house built (at number 9) on two adjoining plots of land, on the site of what is now Adama Mickiewicza Street in Lublinitz. This house still stands today. Initially, the ground floor housed a small restaurant and a bakery. Later, for several decades, it housed a post office, which was then moved to a newly constructed building on the corner of Oświęcimska and Mickiewicza Streets. Today, the ground floor of Mrs. Weigert’s former house is home to a shop, while the upper floor is occupied by rental apartments.

At the end of the 1870s, a man settled here with his family. His name was Lammers, but for many residents of Lublinitz, he was and remained Owczarek’s son. Mr Lammers was an important figure in Lublinitz, as he was the district veterinarian. A happy event occurred in Mr Lammers’ family: on 25 May 1879, a son was born, who was named Hans Heinrich – Jean Henry. Shortly afterwards, the family of a certain Mr Stein, a Jewish merchant and son-in-law of Mr Salomon Courant, who was highly respected in Lublinitz, moved into the same house. Mr. Stein’s property adjoined that of Mrs. Weigert, but the windows of his newly built house overlooked the market square. Great joy reigned in this family: on 13 December 1883, a daughter was born, who was given the name Rosa. And all this would not be surprising were it not for the subsequent fate of these children. It is difficult to determine today whether little Hans played with little Rosa. Shortly afterwards, the Lammers left their house on Rosenbergerstrasse; the Steins also moved, taking their many children to a small house called Villa Nova, located a little way off, in a small orchard near the old wooden church of St. Anne.

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The years passed quickly. Hans Heinrich Lammers was soon to study in the large university city of Breslau, where Siegfried Stein’s family had also moved. It was there, on 12 October 1891, that his youngest daughter, Edith, was born, a child cherished and pampered by all her older brothers and sisters. The bond between the two sisters, eight-year-old Rosa and little Edith, must have been very strong, as it survived all the ups and downs over the years. Rosa took care of little Edith, no doubt replacing her father, who died shortly after her birth, and her mother Augusta, who, forced to provide for her seven children on her own, had taken over her husband’s timber business. When little Edith started school, Hans Heinrich Lammers was taking his first steps as a law student at the University of Breslau. Did young Hans Heinrich visit his hometown of Lublinitz as often as the Stein sisters during the holidays? Or perhaps, fascinated by the grandeur and beauty of Breslau, he had completely forgotten this sleepy little town. And here again, the question arises: did the young Lammers meet Rosa Stein, who was a little younger than him, in the streets of Breslau? Did he meet her, did he remember her? The Steins lived at 38 Michaelisstrasse (now Nowowiejska Street), and Edith attended the Viktoriaschule, located in the Schaffgotsch Palace, which still exists today, for 10 years. Rosa certainly accompanied her to school often, no doubt taking the opportunity on several occasions to contemplate the dark flow of the Oder from the Four Evangelists Bridge or the Imperial Bridge, passing in front of the magnificent Baroque university building. In this city of many cultures and religions, were the differences between their native Lublinitz less noticeable to the young Lammers than to the young Stein? We do not know and will probably never know. Anyone can feel at home anywhere, meeting someone similar to them in their way of searching and thinking. Perhaps, but not necessarily! So let us leave conjecture aside.

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Hans Heinrich Lammers was quickly transferred to Heidelberg University, and Rosa Stein lived in Breslau for many years. Heinrich began his legal career as a judge at the regional court in Bytom in 1912. Rosa stayed with her mother, helping her to run the family home. Due to her character and strong voice, she was nicknamed ‘Lioness’. Little Edith grew into a gifted and determined young woman, embarking on her great adventure in the world of science, first at the University of Breslau, then in Göttingen and Freiburg. The First World War broke out. We do not know what Hans Heinrich did specifically, but we do know that after the war, he did not return to his job in the judiciary in Bytom – he became a civil servant in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. While he climbed the administrative career ladder, Rosa remained a modest spinster from a good Jewish family. Meanwhile, Edith underwent a strange metamorphosis. She went through a period of atheism, then a fascination with God. After the horrors of the First World War and her experience as a nurse in a military hospital, she returned transformed and more focused, searching for the Truth with a capital T. In January 1922, she was baptised into the Catholic Church and wanted to enter a convent, give up her scientific work and devote herself entirely to the one she had chosen: Christ. However, she had to wait another ten years before her dreams came true. Just like Hans Heinrich Lammers, who at that time was waiting in the silence of the ministerial corridors for what he considered to be a great opportunity.

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In 1932, Hans Heinrich was already 53 years old; in the presidential elections in April, the elderly Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg won, but Adolf Hitler, 43, the ‘hero’ of the National Socialists’ failed Munich putsch in December 1923, won nearly 37% of the vote.

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After gaining extensive teaching experience as a teacher in Speyer, Edith Stein, aged 41, a well-known participant in congresses and conferences in Cologne, Freiburg, Basel, Vienna, Salzburg, Prague and Paris, became a professor at the German Higher Institute of Scientific Pedagogy in Münster. Rosa Stein, aged nearly 50, remained at the side of her mother Augusta, who was ageing and distraught by the conversion of her beloved daughter Edith to Catholicism. Hans Heinrich Lammers had apparently forged close ties with the National Socialist movement and Adolf Hitler himself, as he can be seen in uniform alongside figures such as Goebbels, Goering and Schacht in the photograph presenting the new cabinet of the National Socialist Reich Chancellor, taken on 30 January 1933. He became Secretary of State with the rank of Head of the Reich Chancellery and remained in this position until the end of the Thousand-Year Reich in May 1945! This gives pause for thought. It should be remembered that Nazism was a movement of young people, as Joachim Fest, author of the biography of another senior Nazi official, Albert Speer, writes. Speer was a 30-year-old architect, cultured, subtle and well-mannered. Hans Heinrich, a native of the small village of Lublinitz, from a family of district veterinarians, a law graduate of the universities of Breslau and Heidelberg, a judge in Bytom and an official in the Reich Ministry, did he really belong among these people promoted for having ‘broad shoulders and even broader backsides’ (J. Fest)? who had come to power? Most of them owed their positions to incessant intrigue, but he… He must have fitted perfectly into the bureaucratic mould tailored to Nazi fashion, since after only four years, while retaining his rank as head of the Reich Chancellery, he became a minister without portfolio in 1937, and in 1939, after the outbreak of hostilities, was appointed defence adviser on 30 November.

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Meanwhile, Edith Stein, a rebellious Jew, was deprived of the opportunity to work at the Pedagogical Institute and gave her last lecture on 25 February 1933. Nothing could now prevent her from realising her long-held dreams. She entered the Carmelite order in Cologne and took the name Teresa-Benedicta of the Cross, living humbly like all the other sisters, who knew nothing of her fame or talents and judged her solely on the basis of the difficulties she encountered in various manual tasks. Rosa Stein continued to care for her mother Augusta in the house in Breslau. Augusta died on 14 September 1936 at the age of 87. Now nothing kept Rosa in Breslau. She joined her beloved sister Edith in Cologne to be baptised and later became a bell ringer and sacristan at the Carmelite convent in Echt, in the Netherlands, not far from Germany. It was there, in that Carmelite convent, that growing hostility towards Jews in Germany and intensifying racist tendencies had prompted the convent in Cologne to transfer Edith.

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Meanwhile, Hans Heinrich Lammers, originally from Lublinitz, had been approached by a Jewish man from Lublinitz, Mr Zweig, who asked him to help him leave the Third Reich. He obtained this help for himself and his family. They were able to leave quietly for Great Britain after obtaining the necessary passports.

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But then World War II broke out, triggered by the hatred of some, hatred fuelled by absurd racial theories developed and defended by pseudo-scientists of all kinds and origins. Hans Heinrich had to stir up trouble once again, since in 1940 he became SS-Obergruppenführer and at that time he certainly had no intention of helping anyone leave Germany, let alone Jews, even those from Lublinitz. It was probably at this time, uncertain of the consequences of the intrigues in which he was constantly involved in order to keep his position as a lawyer, that he became involved in the ‘solution to the Jewish question’. With all the zeal and methodology of a lawyer, he set about drafting the legal documents for the final solution to the Jewish question, which led, on 9 August 1942, to his neighbour in Lublinitz, Rosa Stein, and her learned sister, Edith, being sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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We could conclude the story of Hans, Rosa and Edith here, but the story continued. In the winter of 1941, a commemorative plaque was affixed to the building in Lubliniec where Hans Heinrich Lammers was born. By 1945, there was no trace of it left, and today few residents of Lubliniec remember it. The ‘hero’ of this story was arrested and brought before an international court. As part of the so-called ‘derivative’ trials of the Nuremberg trials, in addition to the main Nazi criminals, those who hid in the corners of the many ministries of the National Socialist genocide machine were also brought to justice. In November 1947, the ‘Wilhelm-Strafen-Prozess’ began. In addition to Hans Heinrich Lammers, the co-defendants were: former Secretary of State and Ambassador to the Vatican Ernst von Weizsäcker, former Finance Minister Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, former Food Minister Richard Darre and former Press Chief Otto Dietrich. Lammers was accused, among other things, of formulating the provisions relating to the Final Solution. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the Nuremberg trials, but his sentence was reduced to 10 years; he ultimately served his sentence until 16 December 1951 at Landsberg Fortress. He died at the age of 83 on 4 January 1962 in Düsseldorf. Before his death, he certainly learned of the beatification process of Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), which had been underway since the late 1950s, and he was undoubtedly also aware that Rosa Stein, along with Edith, had suffered martyrdom ‘for our people,’ the Jewish people.

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Today, in Lubliniec, the commemorative plaque is not hung on the house at 9 Mickiewicza Street, but on the one at 2 Edith Stein Street. It is dedicated to the memory of the great saint of the 20th century, patron saint of Europe, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein).

Conclusion:

We will not be able to resolve many of the issues raised during this conference. All that remains are ‘assumptions’ and a sad reflection, but one that offers a glimmer of hope: what we become depends on many external factors, but above all on ourselves, on our constant desire to seek truth and love.

‘We cannot prevent the people we interact with on a daily basis from judging us. Even if no words are spoken, we sense what everyone thinks of us, we try to adapt to our environment, and if we fail, our life together becomes torture,’ says Saint Edith[2].

Perhaps this is why many people, wanting to avoid suffering, choose to reject transcendent values and focus on the “here and now”. For us Christians, however, there is no other way.

‘The mysteries of Christianity form an inseparable whole. When we immerse ourselves in one of them, we immerse ourselves in all the others. This is how the path from Bethlehem leads, without stopping at Golgotha, from the manger to the Cross. (…) The path of the Son of God, who became man, passed through the cross and suffering to reach the glory of the resurrection. Reaching the glory of the resurrection through the suffering and death of a human son is the path for each of us, for all humanity’[3].

Understanding this helps us to find meaning in human life, to oppose evil, and to shape our conscience on the basis of goodness, love, and justice.

Translation: Małgorzata Juzwa

[1] E. Stein, Life in a Jewish family, ICS Publications January 1, 1999

[2] E. Stein, The Mystery of Christmas. Human existence and humanity; in this book we publish the text translated by M. Burek on page 123. English text translated by Małgorzata Juzwa

[3] Ibid., p. 124-125

Strike the stone and wisdom will flow forth,

Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites,

Krakow 2002