Throughout the Second World War, there were many horrific stories of executions and war
crimes.
After the conflict had drawn to a close in Europe, the task by the Allies then was to
bring justice to those prisoners by punishing the guards who inflicted such suffering onto
the inmates.
Many of the concentration camps following liberation had death around every corner.
Many of the prisoners told the true horrors of the camps, and inside execution, violence
and beatings were very common.
But inside of Buchenwald, there were many stories of evil at the hands of the SS.
It was where Ilse Koch became known as the witch of buchenwald.
She would inflict such misery onto the prisoners, and selected many to be beaten if they just
looked at her.
But also inside of Buchenwald was a guard known as the Hangman, who gained this specific
nickname for his brutal treatment of two Austrian priests who were both executed after they
were crucified upside down for hours inside a forest where there was a huge amount of
death and suffering.
Join us today as we look at ‘The HORRIFIC execution of the crucified priests of Buchenwald,’
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Buchenwald was a concentration camp which since its opening in 1937 saw a huge amount
of death and killing.
Over 50,000 people were killed inside the barbed wire fences and over 200,000 prisoners
passed through the gates meaning that roughly one quarter of all prisoners perished at the
hands of the evil SS guards.
There were many different execution sites at the camp, including a firing range where
the Commandant Karl Otto Koch was executed after he was found guilty of embezzling and
stealing money from the Third Reich and the Nazis as he was building huge projects at
Buchenwald for his own gain.
But also there was a neck shooting facility where 8000 soviet pows were killed in a stable,
being tricked into a medical exam before they were shot dead.
But inside the camp were two priests who had been imprisoned for some time.
More is known about Otto Neururer, than Mathias Spannlang, but the pair were both Austrian
priests.
Otto Neurerer has served as a priest before the war, and he travelled to many different
lands and parishes to preach.
Following the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 and the Anschluss, the Nazis then arrested
a number of priests inside the land.
Neururer was a parish priest in Gotzens when this happened.
He advised at the time a girl not to marry a divorced man, but this man was actually
a very close friend of a Nazi Gaulieter or regional leader named Franz Hofer.
The girl refused to listen to the priests advise, and then told Hofer of Neururer’s
advice.
With this Otto Neururer was arrested on the 15th December 1938 and was accused of ‘slander
to the detriment of German marriage,’ and then he was sent to Dachau Concentration Camp
on the 3rd March 1939.
He was held at Dachau for a number of months before on the 26th September 1939 he was sent
to Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
Whilst held here he was tortured a number of times for information, and the guards would
brutalise him.
He was held in the Gestapo prison, and was given hardly any food, but whatever food he
did have he passed onto other prisoners who were suffering and starving.
This saved the lives of others, and his giving nature was in line with what he believed in.
The other priest who found himself inside of Buchenwald was Matthias Spanlang, who worked
in a number of Austrian parishes before the Nazis seized control.
The Nazis had begun to hold meetings in his parish for years before the Anschluss, and
Spannlang was not liked by them as he preached against their ideology and beliefs and even
wrote many articles against them.
He was sent to the Rieder Prison on the 24th May 1938, and following this was then taken
to Dachau.
He was then transported to Buchenwald on the same day that Neururer was also transferred.
The pair were both tortured inside of the camp, but then it was alleged that the pair
whilst they were held inside of a detention bunker committed an infringement of the camps
rules.
It was alleged that the pair had agreed to perform a banned baptism inside of the camp
for a prison who came to Neururer in April 1940.
Both of the priests suspected that this was a trap, but following this they were both
sent into a detainment and punishment block where they were beaten and tortured further.
But there was one SS guard who became known as ‘The Hangman of Buchenwald,’ for the
punishment he inflicted on both Spannlang and Neururer.
The two priests were left to Martin Sommer, who was known as a depraved and sadistic SSg
guard.
Whilst at Buchenwald, Sommer was known for being incredibly violent and terrible.
In fact Heinrich Himmler even investigated the camp and because of his intense brutality
Sommer was even brought to trial by the Nazis.
He was known for having a secret compartment under the floor near his death where he had
a number of instruments for torture that he used, and also a number of needles that he
used to kill his victims.
Following torturing them he would kill them with an injection of carbolic acid either
into their heart or their veins which would cause an embolism and kill the prisoners.
Late into the night Martin Sommer the Hangman of Buchenwald would torture prisoners often
to death, and he would then under the cover of darkness kill these prisoners.
He then even hid the victims bodies under his own bed and he would dispose of them in
the following morning.
Martin Sommer was a brute, and he would later receive a reduction in his rank for his crimes
at Buchenwald, and he was even forced to serve inside of a penal battalion on the Eastern
Front.
But two of his Most brutal and barbaric crimes that he carried out was the execution of the
two Austrian priests.
Because they were found performing the Sacrament of Penance allegedly on an inmate, the two
Austrian priests Otto Neururer and Matthais Spannlang were to be executed and were actually
tortured to death.
Neururer was taken into the forest inside the camp, and it was said that he was taken
to a tree and he was then hanged upside down, practically crucified on the tree.
Neururer should have screamed and shouted as he was secured to the tree in the midst
of the winter, however it was said that he courageously never complained and whilst he
was losing consciousness he was mumbling and speaking to God in his final moments.
Neururer was left hanging upside down and naked for 34 hours straight, in complete agony
in the freezing cold.
It was after around 34 hours that he succumbed to his fate, and was killed at the hands of
Martin Sommer the Hangman of Buchenwald.
The execution was incredibly barbaric, and the prisoners often noted that from the forest
nearby that screams could be heard that were blood-curdling and terrifying.
Neururer took the ordeal that he had, being practically crucified for 34 hours before
he then died.
His remains were cremated on the 3rd June 1940, and the Nazis documented his cause of
death as ‘acute cardiac weakness,’ rather than executed through barbaric torture.
Strangely his ashes were then sent to his former Parish of Gotzens and then they were
stored under the altar of the parish church there.
But it’s assumed that also Matthais Spannlang was killed in the same way also, being crucified
to death.
It’s believed that Spannlang was too crucified upside down and then succumbed to his fate
hours later, but there is less that is known about his death.
It;’s believed the pair were killed together, but Spannlang was never beatified but Neururer
was.
The two Austrian priests initially were imprisoned for speaking out against the Nazi’s, and
also speaking out with opinions that the evil Third Reich did not tolerate.
With this the two were transported to Buchenwald which was one of the most brutal concentration
camps of the Second World War.
When the pair were taken there, they were doomed as it’s likely they would have been
executed or killed for their refusal to hand over information, and also at Buchenwald there
was a policy where prisoners would work until they simply died and could not work anymore.
The pair became just two of the over 56,545 prisoners who never made it out of the camp
alive because of the brutality of the concentration camp staff.
What is shocking is that even the Nazis saw the behaviour of the main torturer Martin
Sommer as too much.
Sommer later was imprisoned as a POW inside of a Red Army prison camp, and was later released
from Soviet Captivity in 1955.
Following his release he lived in West Germany, but was brought to trial for being guilty
of murdering 25 inmates.
He was complicit in many more killings, and he was imprisoned.
But he was later released as it was deemed that there was no suitable facility to treat
his war wounds, but he died in 1988 over 40 years after he had committed his evil crimes
and after the war had ended.
For the Hangman of Buchenwald, his crimes went largely unpunished, and there was certainly
no justice for the two Austrian priests who were crucified inside of Buchenwald.
Their stories are just two of thousands of immensely brutal and barbaric treatment that
occurred inside the concentration camps.
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