In the Gospel according to Luke, it is written: “I tell you, if they are silent, the stones will cry out. And in Alsatian, many proverbs threaten liars, cheats, s’bringt neh nix güets, it never brings anything good. The truth always comes out at some point. Michel Weckel, who publishes the book “These Protestants from Alsace who acclaimed Hitler” published by La Nuée Bleue, has held various positions as pastor and project manager within the Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine. This investigation into the family secrets of the Lutheran network, prefaced by Yolande Baldeweck, raises the question of why.
Why did many sons of Alsatian pastors voluntarily enlist in the Nazi armed forces and administration? By what ideology were they animated? Why were so many pastors subject to sanctions after the war, while others fled as early as November 1944 to hide in Germany?
Pastor Michel Weckel, tormented by these questions, conducted a quasi-police investigation in the departmental archives and with Alsatian families. He discovered a whole universe there: that of the active and assumed compromise of part of the Alsatian Protestant world with Nazi ideology from the 1930s, then throughout the Annexation. This book contributes to making known this long concealed history, before the malaise that this silence created in the Alsatian Protestant Church does not encyst definitively.
For the author, it is time to have the courage to face this past. Without bringing shame. Because at a time when some are revisiting history, you have to bet that this undertaking will be beneficial.
– Editions of the Blue Cloud
The site of Editions de la Nuée Bleue.