22 Sep Alfred Delp SJ

Alfred Delp: the Moabit Prison on the Lehrterstrasse

In a letter to his secretary, Luise Oestreicher, Alfred Delp wrote that around August 15, he “was nearly in despair. I was brought back to the prison late in the evening, badly beaten.

Moabit Prison on the Lehrterstrasse in Berlin

“The SS men who brought me left with the words, ‘You’re not going to be able to sleep tonight.  You’ll pray, but there’ll be no God and no angel to deliver you.  But we’ll sleep and tomorrow morning we’ll have our strength back to give you another thrashing.'”

Some months later, in his meditation on the Holy Spirit, he wrote, “I vividly recall that night in the Lehrterstrasse and how I prayed to God that he might send death to deliver me because of the helplessness and pain I felt I could no longer endure, and the violence and hatred to which I was no longer equal. How I wrestled with God that night and finally in my great need crept to him, weeping.  Not until morning did a great peace come to me….”

Alfred Delp in happier times. With his parents and siblings in the early 1930s. Delp’s parents are on either side of him.