Alois Grimm - Execution By Hanging

Execution By Hanging

After several weeks of interrogation and mistreatment in Innsbruck, Fr. Grimm was transferred to Berlin, where he underwent further torture and interrogation. In the summer of 1944 Father Grimm was put on trial before the so-called Volksgerichtshof, which had jurisdiction over ideological offenses against the Third Reich. Both Fr. Grimm's "converts" testified against him. Fr. Grimm suggested he had been entrapped. The notoriously hysterical chief justice of the Volksgerichtshof, Roland Freisler screamed in response, as was his wont, "Fishes are caught in different ways. I have to be very careful to catch a trout. If I want to catch a Jesuit, I have to use special methods. You swallowed it. That proved us right." His public defender, Joachim Lingenberg, wrote afterwards: "Father Grimm's defense belongs to the most frightful memories of my life. It has to do with a piece of historical truth that we must hold onto especially in a time that cheapens the memory of such events.". On 12 August 1944, Roland Freisler stripped Father Grimm of all civil rights and privileges damnatio memoriae and sentenced him to death for two counts of undermining the fighting spirit of the German Wehrmacht and for defeatism. Reflecting on his sentence, Grimm wrote: "The hour has come, I am going home into eternity. In a few hours, I will stand in front of my Judge, my Redeemer and my Father. It is God’s will, to be done everywhere. Don’t mourn over me, I am returning home, you have to wait. I give my life for the kingdom of God, which knows no end, for the society of Jesus, for the youth and religion of our home land". Father Alois Grimm was hanged at the age of 57 on 11 September 1944 in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison.