While Hitler did not feel powerful enough to arrest senior clergy before the end of the war , an estimated one third of German priests faced some form of reprisal from the Nazi government . Bishop von Preysing was protected from Nazi retaliation by his position , his cathedral administrator and confidant , Provost Bl . Bernard Lichtenberg , was not . A strong opponent of Nazism , Lichtenberg had been active with the Catholic Centre Party . Lichtenberg served at St. Hedwig 's Cathedral from 1932 , and was under the watch of the Gestapo by 1933 , for his courageous support of prisoners and Jews . He became a confidante of Bishop von Preysing from 1935 . He ran Preysing 's aid unit ( the '' Hilfswerke beim Bischöflichen Ordinariat Berlin '' ) which secretly gave assistance to those who were being persecuted by the regime . From the '' Kristallnacht '' pogrom of November 1938 onward , Lichtenberg closed each nightly service with a prayer for " the Jews , and the poor prisoners in the concentration camps " , including " my fellow priests there " . Lichtenberg met his demise for protesting the Nazi policy regarding euthanasia directly to Dr. Conti , the Nazi State Medical Director . On 28 August 1941 , he endorsed Galen 's sermons in a letter to Conti , pointing to the German constitution which defined euthanasia as an act of murder . On 23 October 1942 , he offered a prayer for the Jews being deported to the East , telling his congregation to extend to the Jews the commandment of Christ to " Love thy neighbour " . For preaching against Nazi propaganda and writing a letter of protest concerning Nazi euthanasia , he was arrested in 1941 , sentenced to two years ' penal servitude , and died en route to Dachau Concentration Camp in 1943 . He was subsequently honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany