User:Dr Gangrene/Jean-Baptiste Esch

Jean-Baptiste Esch, known as Batty Esch, (4 January 1902 – 10 August 1942) was a Luxembourgish theologian and newspaper editor.

Life
He was born on 4 January 1902 in Weidingen near Wiltz. Esch came from a poor farming family and studied in Rome from 1930 to 1932, earning a doctorate in canon law. He was a journalist and published his book Briefe aus Rom ("Letters from Rome") in 1940.

Esch was ordained on 28 July 1929, and served as a chaplain at the Cathedral, later becoming an editor and then chief editor of the Luxemburger Wort newspaper. He was also the editor of the magazine Die Rundschau, the Luxemburger Wort 's "supplement for literature, arts and science".

He was first arrested on May 11 1940, for eleven days.

On 6 September 1940, he surrendered to the Gestapo in solidarity with two editor colleagues and a priest who had been arrested. He was then taken to prison in Trier and in November 1940 to Berlin and the police prison. After a temporary stay at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp on 11 September 1942. In August 1942, he was sent to Schloss Hartheim near Linz, where he was killed in the gas chamber on 10 August. Schloss Hartheim was a so-called euthanasia institution, where primarily physically and mentally disabled people were killed after cruel experiments were conducted on them. After 1941, many others and a large number of clerics were also killed there.

A street in Luxembourg city is named after him.

Bibliography and further reading

 * Paul Dostert 2003: "Jean-Baptiste ESCH 1902-1942". In: 400 Joer Kolléisch, Band II, p. 389-390. Éditions Saint Paul, Luxembourg. ISBN 2-87963-419-9.