Alois Grimm - Confrontation With National Socialism

Confrontation With National Socialism

The rise of Naziism in Germany caused complications for the Jesuits at Sankt-Blasien, many of whom were openly opposed to the Nazi Party, its ideology, and its political program. Father Grimm was among those who became increasingly vocal in his opposition to Naziism while at Sankt Blasien, and he attracted the negative attention first of more sympathetic colleagues and then of the authorities. A layman who was teaching at Kolleg St. Blasien and a member of the NSDAP remarked, "Grimm talked in derogatory ways about our new ideology. I hope we will shut him up, for a long time, or better even, forever". Grimm was aware of this hostile attention and had some sense of its implications: It would be my greatest honour and luck, if something happens to me. Nazi hostility to the Catholic Church, and the Jesuit order in particular, led the government to expel the Jesuits from Sankt-Blasien in 1939. Father Grimm returned to Tisis, Austria, were he taught Latin in a nearby Catholic seminary and assisted in the local parish. In 1943, an SS soldier came to Grimm and asked to be admitted to the Catholic Church. Father Grimm provided the soldier with religious instruction and eventually received the soldier's wife and child into the Church as well. All these actions were illegal under German law at the time. The soldier also introduced Grimm to an acquaintance who likewise expressed interest in entering the Church. In October 1943, the Gestapo arrested Father Grimm from the parish rectory and transported him for interrogation to the Gestapo prison in Innsbruck. Father Grimm had been arrested on the basis of a denunciation by the S.S. soldier’s acquaintance, who was a Gestapo agent.