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from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
Karl Schmidt was born in 1904 in Zweibrücken, Germany. A Salesian priest, Schmidt was one of the 2,579 Catholic priests imprisoned at Dachau. He was interned there on December 14, 1940 and released on April 10, 1945. No further information is known.
The following poem was written by Father Karl Schmidt while being held in Dachau in 1942 and was passed on by Father Johann Lenz in his book Christus in Dachau, 1960.
Und die Tage sind grau …
Und die Tage sind grau
und die Tage sind lang
und endlos ihre Zahl …
Man hat uns den Namen geraubt
und den Rang,
wir sind eine Nummer bloß.
Das tötet sicherer als der Strang,
das löscht selbst unseres Namens Klang.
Das ist der Verfemten Los.
Und die wir einst Freunde haben genannt,
die ein gütig Geschick hat verschont,
sie tun nun, als hätten sie nie gekannt
den Freund, der als Namenloser verbannt
in Schmach und Vergessenheit wohnt.
Dachau 1942
And the Days Are Grey …
And the days are grey,
and the days are long
and beyond counting.
They've stolen our names
and ranks,
we're just numbers.
Which kills more surely than the noose,
which erases our names, even their sound.
This is the fate of the condemned.
And the people we knew,
whom some benign skill has saved, pretend
they never knew their friend,
exiled without a name,
forgotten and living in shame.
Dachau 1942
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