In June 1945, just weeks after World War II ended in Europe, Bishop Paulus Rusch of Innsbruck wrote a sworn account of how Nationalsocialism had targeted the Catholic Church in Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Buried in the Nuremberg Trial records, his testimony gives us a stark glimpse of what happened to nuns and other women religious under Nazi rule.
The crackdown began early. Already in Spring 1938, the ever-popular Corpus Christi processions were banned, and over the course of the summer Catholic schools shuttered, and priests began to be jailed. This crackdown extended to charitable work. One priest was imprisoned simply for giving bread and coffee to two hungry Dutch prisoners. Such gestures of compassion were deemed “favoring elements foreign to the race.” But by 1939, the regime turned directly against convents.
The Nazis expelled the Dominican Sisters of St Peter’s in Bludenz, closed their convent, and partly demolished the interior of their church. The Innsbruck Sisters of Perpetual Adoration fared worse; they were dragged out of their cloister one by one by Gestapo officers. Their church was seized and turned into a military installation.
This parallels actions elsewhere; Convent churches were closed, desecrated, or turned to military use. In Bregenz, the Abbey of St. Gallus saw its church gutted; at Mehrerau, the abbey and sanatorium were seized. And yet one local consultant, a Josef Gschwilm, thought it was funny; he liked to dress up as a priest and get himself photographed during these monastery closures (Pichler 253).
Layfolk were impacted just as dramatically. Across Vorarlberg, 348 Catholic associations and congregations were disbanded (Pichler 252).
Even schools for girls -- the lifeblood of these communities and the social safety-net for orphans -- were dissolved. In Bregenz alone, the three girls schools of Thalbach, Marienburg, and Riedenburg were all forced to close. In short, the infrastructure that had sustained Catholic belief and practice for generations was systematically dismantled.
These stories remind us that the Nazi assault on faith was not abstract. It reached into classrooms, chapels, and convent walls, stripping women of their vocations, demolishing sacred spaces, and silencing communities of prayer.
What Bishop Rusch called “the fighting of Nationalsocialism” was, for these sisters, a fight simply to exist. And yet, exist they did. Though their convent walls were broken and their schools closed, their witness of faith and service endured beyond the war years -- a quiet defiance that outlasted the regime that tried to silence them.
NOTE ON SPELLING:
I follow the one-word, no-hyphen spelling of “Nationalsocialism” adopted in the Nuremberg Trial documents.
SOURCES:
Meinrad Pichler, Das Land Vorarlberg 1861 bis 2015, Geschichte Vorarlbergs Bd 3. Wagner Universitรคtsverlag, 2015.
Bishop Paulus Rusch, “The Fighting Of Nationalsocialism In The Diocese Of The Apostolic Administration Innsbruck-Feldkirch, Of Tyrol And Vorarlberg,” translated and published in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 5, aka the “Blue Series” of the Nuremberg Trials (1945), books.google.com/books?id=iGN2rIerJR0C&pg=PA1077
