A Female
Bonhoeffer
by Daryl Lach
“A Female Bonhoeffer”
By: Daryl Lach
Many Christians are familiar
with the heroics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German Lutheran pastor who fought
against the Third Reich. He was imprisoned and hanged three weeks before the
end of World War II. Yet few know of The Salvation Army’s own “Bonhoeffer,” Major
Marie Ozanne.
Ozanne was a native of Guernsey,
one of the Channel Islands, which were occupied by the German Army from June
30, 1940 to May 1945. Because the islands’ value was more a propaganda triumph
for Hitler than a strategic one, the people were (except for severe food
rationing) treated fairly well compared to most conquered Europeans---as long
as they remained compliant.
Ozanne was transferred to
Guernsey from Belgium at the outset of hostilities so that she could be near her
aging parents. In 1941, The Salvation Army was banned from the island. But Major
Ozanne continued to preach in the streets, even after her uniform was
confiscated. The Nazi Command at first ignored her and, as Occupation documents
show, labeled her a frustrated, crazy religious fanatic.
However, her ministry became
even more prophetic when she illegally offered food and comfort to the “sub-human”
Jewish and Slavic slave laborers who were transported from Eastern Europe to
build fortifications. The laborers wore rags around their feet for shoes and
subsisted on watery soup. Marie boldly preached against their ill treatment and
directly protested to the Nazi commandant.
Later, when Hitler ordered 2000 (mostly British) residents not born on the Islands deported to Germany, she protested again. Twice, she volunteered to replace islanders selected to be shot, but was turned down.
Several Salvationists thought Marie should “shut up.” They reasoned that nothing much could be done for the slave laborers until after the occupation, and with one armed German soldier for every two unarmed islanders, innocent people might get hurt. Yet she refused to be silent. In the summer of 1942, she was imprisoned and tortured until she took ill and was released to a hospital. On Feb. 25, 1943, at the age of 37, she died from peritonitis.
In 1947 Major Marie Ozanne was
posthumously admitted to the Order of the Founder, the Salvation Army’s highest
honor. Her award cites her for maintaining “an outstandingly brave witness for
God and for Salvation Army principles” and a “self-sacrificing concern for men’s
freedom to serve God.”
Today a section at the Island German Occupation Museum is devoted to her life’s work. This year in February, on the 70th anniversary of her Promotion to Glory, a historical marker was placed on her childhood home. It reads: “A resister to oppression lived here.”