Bradford Remembers - Dietrich Bonhoeffer A light can make us feel safe in a dark place. Sometimes in troubled times individuals and groups of people may be like lights: they resist bad people and try to protect those who are threatened and in danger; this often takes great courage, which is a gift. Such courageous people are a light in the darkness. This is a short story about a man who visited Bradford in 1933, who shone like a light in a dark time. His gift was the courage to protect others from persecution by speaking out against racism and oppression. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian, German priest. He was a member of the German Protestant Church, but he didn’t always agree with their actions. Dietrich didn’t live in Bradford, but he did visit here in 1933 to attend a conference of German Protestant priests, held at the German Evangelical church (now the Delius Centre) in Little Horton. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Hitler’s National Socialist party (the Nazis) were in control in Germany. Instead of one human race the Nazis claimed there were different races and that the White, European, race was superior (better) than others. They claimed White people were better than Black, men better than women; people with disabilities, Gypsies, Roma and Eastern European people were seen as inferior; gay men and those from political or religious groups, whose views opposed Fascism, were imprisoned and often killed. Ethnic Jews and people of Jewish descent were particularly victimised. The Nazis began to impose laws that discriminated against Jewish people. For example, Jewish children were prevented from going to school with non-Jewish children, Jews could not receive treatment in a hospital which cared for non-Jews, Jews could not work in the government. Eventually Jews were not allowed to ride bicycles, go to the cinema, use public swimming pools, keep pets or do a range of everyday things, which everyone else took for granted. Eventually in 1938 Jewish men, women and children were openly attacked during the night of breaking glass - Kristallnacht. The situation got even worse between 1939 and 1945 during World War II. Jews were arrested, imprisoned, forced to work as slaves and murdered by the Nazis. It was not the Jewish religion that the Nazis were opposed to as much as the Jews as a people, to the extent that they demanded that Jews who converted to Christianity, should be expelled from the church and not be accepted as Christians. The German Protestant Church leaders were coerced
DH 2021