REMEMBERING A SILENCED WITNESS

... and celebrating a living one. Here is a fine and moving article by Paul Oestreicher. It is about Franz Jägerstätter, born in 1907 in the village of St Radegund to an unmarried farmhand, not far from Hitler's birthplace, who refused to fight in an unjust war. He knew that the penalty was death and remains a beacon of hope. Paul, who has had the distinction of being a Quaker chaplain at the University of Sussex, in Anglican orders, and a counsellor for the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship (among many other roles), knows very directly the horrors he describes, given his family history. He has been a shining example to me and many others within the ecumenical and peace movements. He is vice-president of CND and a former chair of Amnesty International UK, and was the pioneering director of the Centre for International Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral. He holds New Zealand, German and British nationality. Sadly, we moved to Exeter from Brighton precisely around the time he moved there and married Barbara Einhorn, a specialist in gender studies. (They are pictured together here.)