Comments on: Dachau 1945: The Souls of All Are Aflame

By: Mariam Visagio

Mariam Visagio — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 01:29:34 +0000

In reply to Gavin James Campbell. Are you accusing St. Nikolai of being a Nazi sympathizer and a racist?

By: Austin

Austin — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 18:58:17 +0000

In reply to Gavin James Campbell. Gavin, could you please provide some references or directions to where one can learn about these statements from St Nikolai. This topic should be of interest to everyone. From my personal experience and with information provided by a recent article by Inga Leonova (in The Wheel, I believe) there is a need to sort these things out.

By: Archpriest Alexander Webster

Archpriest Alexander Webster — Tue, 07 May 2019 21:28:52 +0000

In reply to M. Stankovich. Thanks, Dr. S, for sharing that powerful story. May your father's memory be eternal! Вечная память!

By: Gavin James Campbell

Gavin James Campbell — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 23:32:47 +0000

In reply to M. Stankovich. The reason Nikoai Velimirovich never spoke of atrocities is because he was given fair treatment at Dachau. That he was a Nazi sympathizer and make egregious statement about blacks and Jews. He once referred to blacks as sons of Ham, as being a subservient race. It's nice to imagine that he might have regretted such things. Unfortunately his more unpleasant quotes are frequently cited by white supremacists.

By: Gavin James Campbell

Gavin James Campbell — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 23:27:54 +0000

I am pleasantly surprised that this website (of all websites) is publishing articles that acknowledges that the Holocaust is a historical fact. Which it is.

By: Fr Chris Moody

Fr Chris Moody — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 11:09:23 +0000

Thank you. As an orthodox priest and chaplain this is humbling and comforting.

By: M. Stankovich

M. Stankovich — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 15:16:34 +0000

My father was a captured Serbian military officer who spent the last 18-months of the war at Dachau, among a group of officers who made it their mission to protect St. Nikolai Velimirovich. Some brought a mouthful of absconded wine from the staff kitchen where they worked so St. Nikolai could occasionally serve a liturgy, alone and hidden, and accompany him as he took the Eucharist to as many as he could. My mother read me and my brother fairy tales at bedtime (Baba Yaga was her favorite!), but when my father put us to bed, we would beg him him to tell us his stories of the “concentration camp,” where he depicted their captors as buffoons, inept, and easily tricked. The only hints of the reality were his jokes, e.g. “five potatoes to 50-gallons of water, and they called it potato soup.” He never spoke of atrocity, cruelty, or “crimes against humanity,” but my brother and I never forgot his lifetime of tortured sleep – punctuated by thrashing, shouting, and what he simply described as “bad dreams.” It strikes me that in commemorating “all Orthodox Christians who lost their lives at this place,” we must also commemorate those who “survived,” but who lost their “lives” as they once knew it.

This was heartbreaking to read, Fr. Hans, but I thank you for providing this account of the Orthodox Christians who were the largely forgotten victims of these crimes that called out to heaven. Memory Eternal.