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The Deputy
This theatrical production by Rolf Hochhuth, first staged in 1963, is
no less dramatic than the historical events on which it is based.
The facts: During World War II, Cathedral Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg of Berlin was sentenced to jail for publicly praying for the Jews. On his conviction, Lichtenberg asked the Nazis to let him share the Jews’ fate in the death camps. He died on his way to Dachau in 1943. Equally compelling is the story of Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole in the Franciscan order, who died in the starvation bunker at Auschwitz. Ten prisoners were to be sent to the bunker as punishment for one who had escaped, selected arbitrarily. Kolbe volunteered for the fate, asking to replace another man with a family. Despite horrific conditions, Kolbe managed to minister to the other condemned men. So strong was his will, and so disturbing to the Nazi’s was the power of the man’s faith, that they did not wait for him to starve, but rather put him to death by injection. Finally there is the tale of Kurt Gerstein. Gerstein pursued solidly anti-Nazi sentiments in the 1930s, to the degree that he was imprisoned for circulating Protestant-based anti-Nazi information. Upon his discharge from the concentration camp, he joined the SS, with the express purpose of determining how wide spread were the atrocities he had witnessed. He used his opportunities as an SS officer in the concentration camps to document the truth and share it with the outside world. He is presumed to have been killed in France, shortly after the 1944 liberation. These stories of conviction and faith were the basis for Hochhuth’s drama.
The play: The drama follows the spiritual evolution of Father Riccardo Fontana, S.J., an amalgam of the priests Litchtenberg and Kolbe. The war is still new and Fontana is a naïve young priest when Gerstein appears at the Papal Legation in Berlin to make his pleas on behalf of the Jews. Appalled by these revelations, Fontana is even more shocked at the Church’s refusal to help. Later he meets Gerstein, promising to entreat the Pope directly through his father, a layman at the Holy See. As Fontana pursues the matter, his alienation from the politics of Rome grows as strong as his commitment to the plight of the Jews, resulting in his ultimate sacrifice. Robert Brown appeared in the national touring company as the martyred Father Riccardo Fontana, S.J.
