Requiem services in Dahau

The Divine Liturgy and a requiem service were celebrated on June 18, 2003, the Parents’ Trinity Saturday, in the Russian Chapel of the Resurrection built in the territory of the former concentration camp Dahau, Germany. The celebrant was Rev. Nikolay Zabelich, rector of the Parish of the Resurrection in Munich. Before the requiem service Father Nikolay said a sermon stressing the need to pray for the dead. He also called the congregation to lift up special prayers ‘for all those who gave their lives, being tortured and killed at this place for their faith and Fatherland’. After the requiem service the parishioners were invited to share a commemorative common meal.

Dahau is one of the first concentration camps to be built in the territory of Germany. Founded in March 1933 near Munich, it became the first ‘testing ground’ to give a work-out to the system of punishment and other forms of physical and psychological violations of the prisoners’ dignity. Before World War II began, Dahau was a prison for political opponents of the Nazi regime. During World War II, Dahau became ill famed as one of the most terrible death camps in which prisoners were subjected to medical experiments. Some 500 experiments were carried out upon living people in the period of 1941-42 alone. Heinrich Gimmler and other high-ranking Nazi came on regular visits to Dahau to watch these experiments.

The memorial was opened in the camp with the support of the Bavarian Government and the International Committee of Former Prisoners of Dahau. The Chapel of the Holy Resurrection was built with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy of Moscow and All Russia on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the end of World War II as a memorial for Russian people who were killed in the Nazi death camps. The chapel was built by soldiers from the Russian Army Western Group with the help of the German side and the Russian Embassy in Germany.