GRUEBER, HEINRICH°

GRUEBER, HEINRICH ° (1891–1975), German pastor who saved Christians of Jewish extraction from Nazi persecution. Imprisoned in 1937 because of Christian religious opposition, he founded, after his release, the "Buero Grueber" for victims of the *Nuremberg Laws. The Buero aided non-Aryan Christians financially and helped them to emigrate. As a result of his protests in 1940 against the first deportations, Grueber was sent to the Sachsenhausen and later to the Dachau concentration camps. After his release in 1943, he secretly carried on with his work and at the end of the war set up an Evangelical Aid Society for Victims of Racial Persecution. In 1945 he became mayor of Berlin-Karlshorst and from 1949 was the representative of the Evangelical Church in the GDR, until he was forced to resign in 1958. He denounced all efforts to "whitewash" former Nazis and was a witness at the Eichmann trial held in Jerusalem in 1961. On his 70^th birthday, the Grueber Grove was planted in Jerusalem. He wrote Dona Nobis Pacem (1957), Leben an der Todeslinie: Dachauer Predigten (1965²), and Erinnerungen aus sieben Jahrzehnten (1968).

bibliography:

An der Stechbahn (1957²); H. Grueber, Zeuge pro Israel (1963). add. bibliography: H. Ludwig, "Als Zivilcourage selten war – Die evangelische Hilfsstelle 'Buero Pfarrer Grueber' 1838–1940," in: G.B. Ginzel (ed.), Mut zur Menschlichkeit (1993), 29–54; D. Winkler, Heinrich Grueber – Protestierender Christ (1993); J. Hildebrandt, Bevollmächtigt zum Brueckenbau – Heinrich Grueber (1991).

[C.C. Aronsfeld /

Bjoern Siegel (2^nd ed.)]