Fr. Richard Henkes, S.A.C., A Picture of His Life A Picture of His Life | Page 10

worry about him.
Later on, he would find a guard from the Westerwald in the
Dachau camp who sometimes smuggled letters in which Richard
could write more clearly about hunger, loneliness, the good people
who were with him, or the worship services that were so valuable and
powerful.
After his time in quarantine, he came to Block 26. Here the camp
management had gathered the clerics. From 1941, a room of the bar-
racks was even a small chapel. Before the morning assembly they
celebrated Mass at 5am. Only the priests of Block 26 were present.
Sometimes it was possible to secretly take Communion to other parts
of the camp - to believing Catholics, the sick, and even other priests
from Poland.
The work was distributed at the morning assembly on the large
square, which was often also the place where people were put to death.
Richard’s first job was at the SS plantation. The prisoners had to work
hard on the plantation, often hungry, in the wind and the weath-
er. They themselves pulled the plows and were whipped like animals.
Such treatment often led to the prisoners’ deaths.
The propaganda shared during that time talked about protective
measures, labor camps, and rehabilitation camps. There were also ex-
termination camps for “disobedient elements” and opponents of na-
tional socialism. At Dachau, the foremen played cruel games which
risked the prisoners’ lives. For instance, they would take the cap from
the head of a prisoner on the way to the fields and throw it far away.
When the prisoner ran after it, he was shot. The others got the mes-
sage: you would be killed in an “escape attempt.”
After working on the plantation - which occasionally included
removing rust and painting the barbed wire fence - Richard Henkes
came into the post office command. There was a lot of work here,
but it was not inhumanly hard and gave him the opportunity to help
others. Here, along with the letter and card mail, many food parcels
arrived. Without these, even more people would have perished in
Dachau. Hunger was part of the concentration camp. In the post of-
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