Just over eighty years ago, American troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp of Flossenbürg in northern Bavaria. Over the years of its existence, this camp held more than 100,000 people under horrific conditions. Many of its prisoners were literally worked to death, forced to provide slave labor for Germany’s war machine. But many inmates were executed. One of the most famous to be murdered was Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Protestant theologian who resisted the Nazi government and was hanged only weeks before the war ended. Among the other some 30,000 to perish in Flossenbürg was a man by the name of Erwin Tiews. My last name is very rare and even after years of genealogical research, I have yet to determine how I am related to this man. The original record you see here states his date of birth and date of death, along with a cryptic abbreviation: “BV.” This stands for “Berufsverbrecher”—“professional criminal” in German. But in the Third Reich, what exactly was a “criminal”? Our oldest daughter, Dr. Alina Just (née Tiews), who holds a PhD in post-World War II German history, shed some light on this question: “The term ‘BV’ was fluid. It did, in fact, often refer to common criminals,” she explained. “But sometimes resistance fighters, that is, people who secretly fought the Nazi government, were lumped into this category as well.” As Christians, we should always put the best construction on everything. So, I’m going to assume that dear “Onkel” Erwin was someone who fought the evil Nazi system, was caught and then interned in Flossenbürg, where he perished after three years of hard labor. That would mean that he chose to obey God rather than men. We must obey even the laws of even the most wicked governments, but if they try to force us to break any of the Ten Commandments, then we have to resist. As a German-American dual national and pastor, I say, “Rest in peace, Onkel Erwin” and thank you, dear G.I.s, for unlocking the gates of a man-made hell called Flossenbürg and rescuing thousands of poor souls from the jaws of death.
The Tiews in Germany 