Posted on 10/27/2009 8:31:19 AM PDT by NYer
.- On Thursday, Catholics will celebrate the feast day of Helen Kafka, better known as Blessed Maria Restituta. Working as a nurse in the 1940s, she was ordered by the Gestapo to remove crucifixes she had placed in several hospital rooms and was sentenced to death. Pope John Paul II beatified her on June 21, 1998.
Helen Kafka was born in 1894 to a shoemaker and grew up in Vienna, Austria. At the age of 20, she decided to join the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity and took the name Restituta after an early Church martyr.
In 1919, she began working as a surgical nurse in Austria. When the Germans took over the country, she became a local opponent of the Nazi regime. Her conflict with them escalated after they ordered her to remove all the crucifixes she had hung up in each room of a new hospital wing.
Sister Maria Restitua refused and she was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942. She was sentenced to death for "aiding and abetting the enemy in the betrayal of the fatherland and for plotting high treason.”
She spent the rest of her days in prison caring for other prisoners, who loved her. The Nazis offered her freedom if she would abandon the Franciscan sisters, but she refused.
She was beheaded March 30, 1943 in Vienna.
the nazis used beheading?
I read that stalin used crucifixion
We are seeing similar anti-christian patterns in society today. We need to take a lesson from this Blessed woman and apply it to our own communities.
Pray for us O Holy Mother of God,
that mwe may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
I guess they did use beheading
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/65030/Austrian-beheaded-by-Nazis-to-be-beatified
Yep. Old Uncle Adolf's minions came up with a nifty hydraulic guillotine they used with great joy on the enemies of the regime.
Google up what happened to the members of the White Rose sometime.
They were just kids.
The "White Rose" dissidents were beheaded as well.
Stalin killed tens of millions, so crucifixion would have been inconvenient.
This lady stood up to the Nazis. Why are today’s Christians afraid to stand up to the ACLU and it’s lackeys in government? The atheists are not the force driving the anti-Christian nonsense in today’s society.
What a wonderful woman.
Thanks for helping to destroy the ludicrous meme than the Catholics and Hitler (who thought Christianity a “gutter” religion) were in league.
This was new to me too. But I should have realized that the sanguinary demons of the French revolution would live on.
What a brave woman.
The bolsheviks and Stalin crucified priests as part of their persecution of the church- the photos of some martyred (crucified) priests are displayed in our rectory
so many many martyrs, many forgotten
“German Fallbeil”
“Many German states had used a guillotine-like device known as a Fallbeil since the 17th and 18th centuries, and decapitation by guillotine was the usual means of execution in Germany until the abolition of the death penalty in West Germany in 1949. In Nazi Germany, the guillotine was reserved for criminal convicts and political crimes including treason. A famous example of the guillotine being used was on the members of the White Rose resistance movement, a group of students in Munich led by Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans. Contrary to popular myth, executions were generally not conducted face-up, and chief executioner Johann Reichhart was peculiarly insistent on maintaining “professional” protocol throughout the era, having administered the death penalty during the earlier Weimar era. Nonetheless, the Nazis’ use of the Fallbeil was chillingly routine. It is estimated that some 40,000 persons were guillotined in Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. This number includes resistance fighters both in Nazi Germany itself and in those countries that were occupied by them. As these resistance fighters were not part of any regular army they were considered common criminals and were in many cases taken to Germany and decapitated. Decapitation was considered a “dishonorable” death, unlike an “honorable” death, e.g., execution by firing squad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decapitation
Another parallel between Nazis and their Muzzie pals, they were into the decapitation thing.
Hitler thought beheading was more Germanic. They actually started with the axe, then went to the guillotine.
This is apparently what Sophie Scholler last saw on this earth: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_v0neUj-VDa4/RYkEd4sIEsI/AAAAAAAAAMc/R9PVTdliyyE/s400/sophiescholl-originalfallbeil.jpg
Interestingly enough the chief executioner under the Nazis later helped execute Nazis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Reichhart
What? all the WW2 movies that I saw showed the nazis going to church! Yeah - the nazis had Christmas parties and then went out and rounded up Jews. Nothing but a big myth created by the Christ-hating left.
I guess the movies were a big lie. This shows that the nazis hated Christianity.
Thank you for posting that additional information and link.
She showed the exact same courage and defense of the Catholic faith that has been remarkably demonstrated by all the bishops of the United States, as well as all those who work for the bishops at the USCCB in Washington DC.
Death by decapitation (using a form of guillotine) was in German law prior to the ascension of the Third Reich. The Nazis used it on Sophie and Hans Scholl, and others of The White Rose organization, and one or two women involved in the Project Valkyrie 26 July plot. Not surprised they used it on this courageous nun...
the infowarrior
BTTT!
Yes, beheading was used by the Nazis. Sophie Scholl and her brothers, who organized “The White Rose’’ resistance movement in Nazi Germany were beheaded.
Never forgotten by the Lord! I pray I have the courage to stand up to the face of evil in our day. With God's grace and guidance we can all be a force of good against the tyranny that has satan as its foundation.
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