...it happened at that time...
In 1945, just before the liberation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was being held in the prison at Flossenburg Germany. His last weeks were spent with men and women from a wide range of nationalities. As written in the introduction to his work Life Together, Doberstein quotes an English officer:
Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive....He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near....On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us. He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprionment, the thoughts and the resolutions it had brought us. He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. They said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us." That had only one meaning for all prisoners ---the gallows. We said good-by to him. He took me asde: "This is the end, but for me iis the beginning of life." The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.
The text on which he spoke on that last day was "With his stripes are we healed."
Grace in Word and deed.
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