at a moment when the living conditions there were worsening. Of the 12,000 prisoners, there were 2,600 priests. He was inmate number 29392. The Germans were grouped in a block where they have the right to attend daily Mass celebrated by one of them; it is only on 19 March 1943 that Kentenich would finally celebrate his first Mass at the camp. He gave a nightly spiritual conference to his fellow prisoners thanks to the protection of the "kapo" (inmate block chief) Guttmann, a Communist with a rather violent temper, but fascinated by the behavior of the Father. Guttman saw Kentenich sharing his meager daily bread and soup with a detainee in need. Guttmann will save the priest who is destined to die in the gas chamber because of his poor health. On the day of the selection visit by an S.S. physician, the kapo hides Father Kentenich; assigned to the disinfection commando, he can now circulate in the camp. Foundation of Schoenstatt International at Dachau On 16 July 1942 two new Schoenstatt branches were created at Dachau under the responsibility of two lay deportees: the Secular Institute of the Families and the Institute of the Brothers of Mary. Transferred into various blocks, Kentenich restarted his apostleship each time despite the personal risk he incurred. Over the last three months of 1944, the tightening of the Nazi regime and epidemics cause the death of 10,000 prisoners in Dachau. It was at this point that, in a surprising act of faith and hope in this hellish place, Father Kentenich formed, with a group of disciples, the International Movement which extended the foundation of Schoenstatt out into the world. He wrote under unimaginable material conditions treaties of spirituality, prayers, and a didactic poem of over 20,000 verses. In December, Bishop Gabriel Piguet, a French prisoner, ordained under the highest secrecy a priest Blessed Karl Leisner, a seminarian from Schoenstatt. Suffering from tuberculosis and very weakened, Leisner will celebrate only one Mass before dying; he will be beatified by John Paul II on 23 June 1996. On 6 April 1945, upon the arrival of American troops, the prisoners are released. On 20 May, at the feast of Pentecost, Father Kentenich returned to Schoenstatt. He immediately restarted his work, in order to establish a barrier against those whom he considered the biggest dangers to the world: communism in the East, and practical materialism in