Father Jean Bernard

Jean Bernard (born 13 August 1907 in Luxembourg, † September 1, 1994 ibid ) was a Luxembourg priest, whose parish priest authentic report 25487 from the Dachau concentration camp, the film " The Ninth Day " by Volker Schlöndorff based.

Life

Jean Bernard was born in 1907, the sixth of ten children of a wealthy merchant family in Luxembourg. He studied at the University of Leuven and the Luxembourg seminary theology and philosophy, and in 1933 received his doctorate of philosophy. Since 1934, he headed the international Catholic film office in Brussels. After the dissolution of the office by the Gestapo in June 1940, he organized the return of Luxembourg families in the home, who had fled before the German troops to France.

Shortly thereafter, on January 6, 1941, he was arrested as a symbol of the Luxembourg Catholic resistance to the German occupation and taken to prison stays in Luxembourg and Trier for 18 months in the concentration camp at Dachau. Presumably, through the efforts of his brother in influential places the German occupation of Paris, he was initially dismissed on vacation and finally on August 5, 1942 the Dachau concentration camp. About his experience in the camp, he wrote after his release, the book Pastor 25487, which describes the suffering of prisoners under the SS thugs.

After the war, Bernard was appointed Monsignor in various high positions of the Catholic Church in Luxembourg and has received numerous awards and honorary titles. He died on 1 September 1994.

Writings

• L' homme à la lumière de l' primitif modern ethnology, 1937 ( frz, on dt: Primitive man in the light of modern ethnology)
• Pastor 25487, autobiographical account in diary form, first appeared in 1945 as a feuilleton sequences in the Luxemburger Wort and by Editions Saint Paul, Luxembourg, 2004, 208 pages. ISBN 2-87963-286-2, previously in other editors, such as the Anton Pustet Verlag, Munich 1962, and as priest block Dachau 1941.1942, Berchmans, Munich 1984