Mariannhill. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1939 and spent 1940 as parish priest in Glöckelberg, Austria.
On April 21, 1941 he was arrested by the Gestapo and ultimately sent to the concentration camp of Dachau. While in Dachau he studied Russian in order to be able to help the prisoners from Eastern Europe. In the autumn of 1944 he volunteered to help in the typhoid barrack in the concentration camp. In his desire to help the typhoid victims he contracted the disease himself. He died on March 2, 1945. He was regarded as a holy man. His beatification process was initiated on July 26. 1991, in Würzburg, Germany. And its second stage was officially opened at the Vatican in May 1999.
In a letter from Dachau to his sister, he wrote: “Whatever we do, whatever we want, is surely simply the grace that carries us and guides us. God’s almighty grace helps us overcome obstacles … love doubles our strength, makes us inventive, makes us feel content and inwardly free. If people would only realize what God has in store for those who love him!”
He also wrote from this hell of suffering: ‘Even behind the hardest sacrifices and worst suffering stands God with his Fatherly love, who is satisfied with the good will of his children and gives them and others happiness.’
Available the Novena to Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig
There is now available a novena booklet of Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig, C.M.M. You may receive a free copy of it by sending a stamped (postage for one ounce, currently 63 cents), self-addressed envelope to us at:
LEAVES
PO Box 87
Dearborn MI 48121-0087
Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig CMM
(1911- 1945)
Father Engelmar has been called the Angel of Dachau. Father Engelmar was born in Greifendorf, Czech Republic (formerly Czechoslovakia) in 1911. At the age of 18 he entered the seminary of the Mariannhill Missionaries in Reimlingen. He spent his student days in Würzburg. In May 1938 he made his final profession of vows in the Congregation of the Missionaries