Father Jakob Gapp S.M.
Father Jakob Gapp S.M.
First page of the “People’s Court” death sentence issued for Jakob Gapp on July 2, 1943.
The Austrian priest Jakob Gapp sharply criticized National Socialist policies in 1938/39, and had to flee to France as a result in January 1939. There, too, his sermons denounced the persecution of Catholics in Germany. Gapp, who ended up living in Valencia, was lured into German-occupied France by the Gestapo in November of 1942 and then arrested. The “People’s Court” under Roland Freisler sentenced him to death for “aiding the enemy” on July 2, 1943. Jakob Gapp was beheaded in Plötzensee prison on August 13, 1943.