By DEB PIROCH
Jakob Gapp, was born the seventh and last child to Austrian parents just before the turn of the last century, in 1897. Schooled religiously, like so many in those days, he attended a Franciscan school from age 12. Due to the distance, it meant he was often away from home for longer periods. He left shortly before finishing to serve in World War I at the Italian front, and then was interned in an Italian POW camp before returning home.
After finishing his schooling, Jakob felt called to the religious life. Instead of the Franciscan order, he found drawn by the Society of Mary, and entered. Additionally, he later opted to study for the priesthood, and was ordained in Fribourg, Switzerland in 1930. One of his first assignments as a young priest was teacher at a Marianist school for boys in Graz, Austria.
But in 1938 came Hitler’s “Anschluss” of Austria. Though some welcomed the Fuehrer as a way out of poverty and hunger left by the aftermath of World War I, Fr. Gapp recognized the evils portending as incompatible with Christian life. He began encountering problems almost immediately, as he steadfastly refused to say, “Heil Hitler” to those he met, and would neither support nor wear a swastika. This raised suspicions and it seems he was denounced for the first time to the Gestapo.
The school was afraid for its safety, and for the rest of 1938 he went parish to parish in an uneasy existence, but not hesitating to condemn Hitler’s policies in his sermons. He also defended Mit Brennender Sorge, the seminal encyclical on the Church and the German Reich issued by Pope Pius XI.
Finally, thanks to one of his brother religious, he obtained a visa for France and left in 1939. (Hitler did not occupy France until 1940.) He made it to Bordeaux, and four months later moved on to Spain.
While in Valencia, Spain, he still felt that he did not fit in and attempted to gain entry to England, which request was subsequently denied. He had been happy teaching, although his burden as the only priest at the school was heavy. Yet even here, around him, there was sympathy toward Nazi Germany. From this point on, Fr. Jakob is often called Fr. Santiago Gapp, Jakob being a cognate of Jacob or James in Spanish.
While he was in Spain, Fr. Gapp was safe. But the Germans seemed to have a vendetta against him and had followed his activities since 1938. As he was about to be assigned to yet another post in 1943, he met two men who claimed to be Jews, claimed that they were seeking conversion and spent six months cultivating his friendship.
They eventually suggested a trip as a break, for which he sought and received the permission of his superior. Yet the trip was a ruse. They were in fact agents of the Gestapo who managed to lure him to the border with France — a nation now occupied by Nazi Germany — and to Heinrich Himmler’s headquarters in Berlin.
There Fr. Gapp’s chief interrogator under Himmler, Karl-Ludwig Neuhaus, remembered that Himmler was fascinated and demanded to see very bit of the interrogation. During the two hours of questioning, Gapp was very open in testifying for the Catholic faith. On July 2, he was tried and after merely two hours sentenced to death for speaking against the German Reich. Interestingly enough, Fr. Gapp’s interrogator would live long enough to see him beatified in 1996.
(Tragically, Himmler had been raised Catholic but abandoned the faith early on in favor of occultism and National Socialism.)
August 13, a month later, Fr. Gapp was informed in his captivity at Plotzensee Prison that he would be executed that day. During the next few hours before his beheading, he serenely renewed his vows, and wrote his superior and brother (source: tellerreport.com):
“I was sentenced to death on July 2, the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Today the sentence will be executed. At 7 p.m., I will go to my dear Savior, whom I always loved fervently. Do not grieve for me! I am totally happy. Naturally I had to spend many painful hours, but I was able to prepare myself very well for death. Have courage, and endure everything for the love of God, so that we can meet again in Heaven.”
He calmly walked to his execution where he was beheaded in all of nine seconds. Later Himmler, who in some ways admired Fr. Gapp, stated if he only had more Fr. Gapps on the Nazi side, they would win the war. Fr. Gapp’s body was given to the anatomy institute in Berlin for dissection in Berlin, for fear that his burial would lead to a martyr’s following. From 1943-1945 the Nazis executed roughly 2,800 prisoners just at Plotzensee Prison alone.
Pope St. John Paul II beatified Fr. Gapp November 24, 1996, the same date as another priest victim of the Nazis, Fr. Otto Neururer. Neururer was the first priest to die in a concentration camp, at Buchenwald, after being hung upside down for 34 hours. At the beatification, John Paul II stated [translated from German]:
“These newly beatified speak to us in the special language of the cross, because they turn our thoughts back to the times of Christian persecution. They left us a heroic sacrifice….Although in the eyes of men death seems to have won, they have received the fullness of life as a gift according to God’s plan for salvation….Fr. Jakob Gapp remains a fearless witness to the truth for us.
“His life resembles somewhat that of St. John the Baptist, who told shocked tyrants in telling them what was forbidden, and then sacrificed his life in the process. Fr. Gapp is the one who issued an uncomfortable warning regarding the revealed truth of Christ….When you go home, I ask you to hold fast in faith to the example and message of these great men.”
Fr. Gapp’s feast day is August 13.
Postlude
The history of Fr. Gapp could have been lost. Key data that was used in his beatification process was discovered, according to The Tablet newspaper of England, in May 1945. The Nazis had shipped his file (likely with lots of others) to a paper mill to be destroyed. There the files were providentially intercepted by the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps. Thus, God’s will to have His servant known to the world was not suppressed.
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